'Radioactive' lacks the charge of authenticity

      Who knew?

     In the film Radioactive, Marie Curie and her husband Pierre go skinny dipping.

     I don’t know whether the real Madame Curie — winner of two Nobel Prizes — enjoyed such liberated pursuits, but little about director Marjane Satrapi's movie convinced me that I was watching something real. 
    In addition to being mired in period trappings, the movie strains (does it ever) to show both the healthy and devastating impacts of radiation. Scenes of Hiroshima, nuclear bomb tests, and a meltdown at a nuclear plant disrupt Curie's story, as does a hospital visit during the 1950s in which radiation helps a boy with cancer.
     The movie was adapted from a graphic novel by Lauren Redniss; a sweeping, time-shattering approach may have worked on the page. Here, it becomes awkward, even a trifle ludicrous at times.

     As played by Rosamund Pike, Marie Curie stands as an obvious avatar for female brainpower. Sam Riley portrays Pierre Curie, Marie's husband. Also a scientist, Pierre helps Marie with her landmark discoveries of radium and polonium. 

    Radioactive can be groan-inducing, falling prey to creative overreach in scenes such as a dream sequence in which Marie views the future of radioactivity, a replay of an already stated theme: Radiation can be used for good or evil.

     Satrapi, who directed the animated film Persepolis, begins by introducing us to the feisty Maria Sklodowska, a fiercely independent Polish emigre living in France, where she battles with the scientific establishment for lab space. Ms. Sklodowska, of course, becomes Mrs. Curie.

     What the movie doesn't underline, it telegraphs. Consider poor Pierre’s fate. He handles large amounts of pitchblende in the attempt to produce radium. We know it’s only a matter of time until he coughs some telltale blood into his handkerchief. 

     Pierre, as history demands, doesn't succumb because of the dangerous substances with which the Curie team worked. He's run over by a horse and wagon while crossing a Parisian street.
     Health-wise, it can’t be a good sign that Marie insists on taking a glowing green vial to bed with her. 

     The movie also spends time showing that Marie wasn’t afraid of being deemed a social outcast. After Pierre’s death, she had an affair with a married lab assistant (Aneurin Barnard), appalling even the live-and-let-live French.

    But wait. There’s more. 
    Late in the movie, Curie accompanies her by-then-grown daughter (Anya Taylor-Joy) to the battlefields of World War I, where the two hope to save wounded soldiers by using Curie’s X-Ray machine, shown here in a cumbersome portable version. Curie's daughter Irene went on to win a Nobel Prize of her own in physics and chemistry.
     If you grew up watching black-and-white TV, you probably remember that Greer Garson played Marie Curie in Madame Curie, a sanitized 1943 version of the Curie story. 

     No one likely will accuse Satrapi of trying to turn Marie Curie into a saint, but the movie's attempts to maintain a serious, high-stakes tone often spills into crippling melodrama or, worse, didacticism.
     In trying to be more than a standard-issue biography, Radioactive winds up being much less.

A heartbreaking Iranian fable

Is it an art object or a movie? Chicken with Plums takes its time creating sad beauty.

Nasser Ali-Khan is a world-class violinist. But when his wife -- in a fit of rage -- breaks his violin, he stops playing. Nasser finds a replacement violin, but he can't find the spirit required to resume his brilliant career.

As the Iranian movie -- Chicken With Plums -- unfolds, we learn that Nasser's problems extend back to the days before he was unhappily married with children. You see, Nasser loved a young woman like he'd never loved anyone before or since. And she loved him back.

But -- as cruel fate would have it -- the young woman's father refused to let his daughter squander her life with a musician who might not be able to support her. Nasser moved on, but he left his heart behind.

So goes the story told by directors Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, who previously directed the brilliant animated film Persepolis. This time, the directing duo mixes live action and animation for a story that's at once sad and invigorating.

The sadness stems from Nasser Ali-Khan's slow march toward death. The invigoration derives from the intoxicating mixture of realism and artifice that makes Chicken with Plums special, a sobering look at the many consequences resulting from the day that Nasser was denied the love of his life, a woman named Iran (Golshifteh Farahani).

As played by Mathieu Amalric, Nasser comes across as a deeply embittered soul who battles with his wife (Maria de Medeiros), the woman he married when he knew he couldn't have Iran. His wife tries to please him, even cooking his favorite dish, the chicken with plums of the movie's title.

But there's no pleasing Nasser, who eventually takes to his bed, vowing to languish there until he expires.

The ingredients of this fanciful fable are deeply melodramatic, but the movie ripples with humor, and it's so obviously creative that it sweeps you away with a story that involves flashbacks and flashbacks within flashbacks.

Based on a graphic novel by Satrapi, the movie makes a place for the Angel of Death (Edward Baer), a character that eventually catches up with Nasser, not a terribly difficult task because Nasser is not trying to outrun his end.

Spread over eight days, the story takes us through the pivotal events in Nasser's life, including his relationship with his mother (Isabella Rossellini), a woman who pushes him toward marriage.

Because of its exaggerated stylistic flourishes, Chicken with Plums sometimes feels as if it's easier to appreciate than to fully embrace, but when the movie draws to a close, it leaves you with a sweet sadness, honey laced with tears.