Radioactive Movie Storyline. Directed by BAFTA and Academy Award® nominee Marjane Satrapi, Radioactive – a celebration of the pioneering work of Marie Curie, played by BAFTA and Academy Award nominee Rosamund Pike. In the male-dominated society of late 19th century Paris, Marie is a fiercely passionate scientist, who struggles to progress her ground-breaking research, despite her obvious brilliance.
After joining forces with fellow scientist and future husband, Pierre Curie, they take her exploration of radioactivity forward, discovering not one, but two new elements: radium and polonium. The genius of the Curies’ discoveries and the ensuing Nobel prize propels the devoted couple into the international limelight. But after a tragic accident Marie must continue to advance her work alone resulting in revolutionary discoveries that have dramatic consequences for the modern world.
Radioactive is a 2019 British biographical drama film directed by Marjane Satrapi and starring Rosamund Pike as Marie Curie. The film is based on the 2010 graphic novel Radioactive: Marie & Pierre Curie: A Tale of Love and Fallout by Lauren Redniss.
Radioactive premiered as the Closing Night Gala at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 14, 2019. To celebrate International Women’s Day, the film’s UK premiere took place at the Curzon Mayfair Cinema on March 8, 2020, ahead of its intended 20 March theatrical release, which was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
StudioCanal eventually released the film in the United Kingdom on digital platforms on June 15, 2020 and through video on demand on 6 July, followed by a DVD release on July 27. In the United States, where the film was originally set to be released theatrically on 24 April 2020 by Amazon Studios, it was released straight to Amazon Prime Video on July 24, 2020.
About the Story
Based on Lauren Redniss’s award-winning graphic novel, Marjane Satrapi’s (Persepolis) biopic stars Rosamund Pike as two-time Nobel Prize–winning scientist Marie Curie, highlighting the groundbreaking discoveries she made with her husband, Pierre (Sam Riley).
Marie Curie is the only person ever to win the Nobel Prize in two different fields, physics and chemistry. Though she opened the door to understanding some of the most potent forces in the universe, her century-old story endures in another sense: she was a brilliant woman fighting simply to be heard, to claim her rightful place beside, not behind, her husband. In Radioactive, as played by Rosamund Pike (Gone Girl, TIFF ’18’s A Private War), Curie is a woman with an unmatched mind, a clarion voice, and her own eternal fire.
When she lands in Paris from Warsaw at age 24, Maria Sklodowska is passionately curious, but impatient with lesser minds. Meeting the more established Pierre Curie (Sam Riley) could be her salvation, but Maria — now Marie — proves disastrous at flirting and small talk. Yet even as the two argue, they recognize a mutual attraction. Soon Pierre and Marie agree to not just work together, but to marry. As they push their scientific investigation forward, the Curies unlock forces far beyond their control.
Based on the remarkable graphic novel by MacArthur “Genius Grant”–winner Lauren Redniss, Radioactive begins as a familiar biopic but soon leaps into more exciting territory. Marjane Satrapi, whose animated Persepolis was nominated for an Academy Award, shifts into gorgeous animation for a scene in which Marie and Pierre explain uranium to a dinner-party guest.
When their discovery of radium and polonium makes headlines, a dazzling montage shows how radioactivity became a bizarrely naive consumer fad. But it’s the narrative leap from the Curie lab in the early 20th century to the decades-later impact of atomic bombs that reveals just what kind of film Radioactive is — audacious, compelling, and surprisingly romantic.
Radioactive (2020)
Directed by: Marjane Satrapi
Starring: Rosamund Pike, Sam Riley, Sian Brooke, Simon Russell Beale, Anya Taylor-Joy, Ariella Glaser, Indica Watson, Cara Bossom, Aneurin Barnard, Edward Davis, Katherine Parkinson
Screenplay by: Jack Thorne
Production Design by: Michael Carlin
Cinematography by: Anthony Dod Mantle
Film Editing by: Stéphane Roche
Costume Design by: Consolata Boyle
Set Decoration by: Robert Wischhusen-Hayes
Music by: Evgueni Galperine, Sacha Galperine
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic elements, disturbing images, brief nudity and a scene of sensuality.
Distributed by: Amazon Studios
Release Date: September 14, 2019 (TIFF), June 15, 2020 (United Kingdom), July 24, 2020 (United States)
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