While mostly hewing to unremarkable biopic formula (yes, there’s a slow-clap response to a speech given by the main character), this dramatization of the life of double Nobel-prize winning scientist Marie Curie does manage a few inventive flourishes along the way. Curie’s discoveries in the field of radioactivity had numerous, world-changing implications, and here and there Radioactive zooms forward in history to demonstrate both the good (chemotherapy) and the horrific (Hiroshima, Chernobyl). This tension between scientific discovery’s peril and promise—as well as an ambient score that keeps the tension percolating—is far more stimulating than the biographical check marks the movie otherwise concerns itself with, despite committed performances from Rosamund Pike as the headstrong, high-strung Curie and Sam Riley as Pierre Curie, her partner in the lab and marriage. Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis) directs, offering a few flourishes here and there—including a trippy dream Curie has that unfolds beneath the green glow of radium. Mostly, however, the glow here is a tony one. This should do for hissing Bunsen burners what Downton Abbey did for copper tea kettles.
