Joy: fertility film starring Bill Nighy offers 'dose of seasonal cheer'

"Joy" is a British film that could be seen as old-fashioned, said Emily Zemler on Observer (New York), yet it strikes a surprisingly modern note.

Set in the 1960s and 1970s, it is about the invention of IVF – a fertility treatment that is currently under fire in the US from right-wingers. Struggling to create the first test-tube baby are nurse and embryologist Jean Purdy (Thomasin McKenzie), scientist Robert Edwards (James Norton) and surgeon Patrick Steptoe (Bill Nighy). Purdy – who is unable to have children, but determined to help others – provides the film's emotional core, shepherding volunteers through gruelling trials while facing rejection by her religious mother, and remaining unbowed by repeated failure.

There's nothing flashy about "Joy", and its vintage aesthetic leans towards the dour; but sometimes, "it's the unassuming movies that manage to sneak up on you".

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You feel the film taking "a deep breath" at the task it has set itself, said Danny Leigh in the Financial Times: telling the story in broad strokes, but embracing clinical detail. Debate about laparoscopies alternates with chat about chutney, emphasising the "sweetly human" nature of the project.

The script misses a few tricks, said David Rooney in The Hollywood Reporter: more could have been made of the public hostility towards the "Frankenstein" project. But the actors lift the material: Norton brings charm and sincerity to his role and McKenzie combines grit with a vein of melancholy.

They're both impressive, said Tom Shone in The Sunday Times, but it's Nighy who guides "Joy" home. His mix of bone-dry humour and innate decency are the perfect foil for the film's welling emotions. And his performance of a C-section turns out to be "the dose of seasonal cheer you didn't know you needed".