REVIEWSApril 2019 | Sight&Sound | 73Reviewed by Philip Kemp
With her fourth feature, Saudi Arabia’s first
female film director, Haifaa Al Mansour, returns
to her native country and a theme expanding
on her debut work. The eponymous heroine
of Wadjda (2012) was ten years old, strongly
independent-minded and determined to have a
bicycle, despite being told that girls aren’t allowed
them. Maryam (Mila Alzahrani) is her adult
counterpart, a young doctor who finds herself
repeatedly up against the endemic sexism of
Saudi society. Early on, we see these attitudes at
their most blindly (literally) entrenched, when
an elderly patient, Abu Musa, is brought in
seriously ill but, shouting and struggling, with
his eyes firmly closed, refuses to let her treat him
or even look at him, demanding a male doctor.
When at the airport she’s blocked from flying
to Dubai, as her travel permit needs endorsement
from a male ‘guardian’ (a coincidental echo of
Soheil Beiraghi’s recently released Permission,
set in Iran), Maryam impulsively decides to run
as a candidate for the local municipal elections.
From here on, Al Mansour shows us that the
same sexist (if less hysterical) reactions as Abu
Reviewed by Pamela Hutchinson
In Radioactive, Rosamund Pike inhabits a role
previously taken by such stars as Greer Garson
in 1943’s Madame Curie and Isabelle Huppert in
1997’s Les Palmes de M Schutz. Hers is a compelling
if often quite dour rendering of the pioneering
scientist Marie Curie, and her performance
provides the backbone of this wandering biopic,
which otherwise teeters constantly between
melodrama, lecture and vivid fantasy.
The film is structured in the form of flashbacks.
Marie, dying in hospital at the age of 66, recalls
her younger years, from the beginning of her
scientific career and her romance with Pierre
Curie (Sam Riley), through to a sex scandal,
xenophobic backlash and her fieldwork during
World War I. Flashforwards to the far-reaching
impact of her work on radiation barge into
the historical narrative; these comprise briefly
sketched but nonetheless brutal vignettes
of Hiroshima, atomic tests in the Nevada
desert, and the Chernobyl disaster, as well
as a little boy’s first radiotherapy treatment,
though his subsequent fate is left uncertain.
Radioactive is adapted for the screen from
a graphic novel, Lauren Redniss’s Radioactive:
Marie & Pierre Curie, a Tale of Love and Fallout,
and if the dialogue is for the most part
flatly factual, offering stilted exposition,Musa’s bedevil every juncture of Maryam’s daily
life – whether it’s the theatrically weary sigh of a
functionary when she asks to see his boss, or the
condescending TV interviewer who assumes that,
as a woman, she’s only interested in gardens.
Given its clear message that change – in
attitudes and in the law – is seriously needed,
Al Mansour’s film could easily have turned
hectoring, but it is handled with a lightness of
touch and a sense of the ridiculous that deftly
sidestep the risk. The film is graced with appealing
performances, not just from Al Zahrani as the
staunch Maryam, but from Dhay and Nourah
Al Awad as her sisters, their responses to her
candidature vividly contrasted; a diverting if
superfluous subplot brings in their glum father
Abdulaziz (Khalid Abdulraheem), an oud player
out on tour and still grieving the death of his
wife. Only a last-minute change of heart strains
credulity. And indeed change is happening in
Saudi, albeit slowly: the film starts with Maryam
driving, impossible until recently, and the
‘guardian’ travel rule has been rescinded. The
mere fact that so critical a film could be made,
and by a woman, is heartening in itself.The Perfect Candidate
Germany/Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2019
Director: Haifaa Al Mansour
Radioactive
Director: Marjane Satrapi
Certificate 12A 109m 42sPresent-day Saudi Arabia. Maryam is a doctor at a
small-town emergency clinic. She phones Tarek, her
municipal councillor, about the clinic’s approach
road, which is unpaved and often swamped, but he
tells her the paving work isn’t urgent. Setting off
on a trip to a conference in Dubai, where there’s a
chance of a prestigious posting to Riyadh, Maryam
is turned away at the airport, told her travel permit
has expired. Unable to contact her musician father
Abdulaziz, who could update her permit, she calls on
her cousin Rashid, who’s vetting candidates for themunicipal elections. He can’t help with the permit,
but Maryam impulsively decides to run as a candidate
against Tarek, campaigning about the approach road.
She asks the help of her sisters Selma and Sara.
Astonished at first, wedding photographer Selma
soon pitches in, but teenage Sara remains disaffected.
Maryam’s candidacy causes a sensation and some
hostility, but interviewed on TV she gradually gathers
support. The clinic’s road is suddenly paved as ‘an
emergency’. Maryam loses the election, but makes
a good showing. She decides to stay at the clinic.Produced by
Roman Paul
Gerhard Meixner
Haifaa Al Mansour
Brad Niemann
Written by
Haifaa Al Mansour
Brad Niemann
Director of
Photography
Patrick Orth
Editor
Andreas Wodraschke
Production Designer
Olivier MeidingerComposer
Volker Bertelmann
Recording Mixer
Uve Haussig
Costume Designer
Heike Fademrecht
©Razor Film
Produktion
GMBH, Haifa Al
Mansour’s Est. for
Audiovisual Media
Production
Companies
Al MansourEstablishment for
Audiovisual Media,
and Razor Film in
co-operation with
Norddeutscher
Rundfunk
With the support of
Filmförderungsan-
stalt, Medienboard
Berlin-Brandenburg,
Mitteldeutsche
Medienförderung,
General Culture
Authority of
the Kingdom ofSaudi Arabia
Executive Producers
Faisal Baltyuor
Fahad Alsuwayan
Christian Granderath
Rena RonsonCast
Mila Alzahrani
Maryam
Khalid Abdulraheem
Abdulaziz
Dhay
SelmaNourah Al Awad
Sara
Tarek Ahmed
Al Khaldi
Omar
Shafi Al Harthy
Mohammed
Hamad Almuzainy
Abu Musa
Bandar Alkhudair
Tarek Al Hasan
Ahmad Alsulaimy
Rashid
In Colour[2.35:1]
Subtitles
Distributor
Modern Films
German
theatrical title
Die perfekte
KandidatinRevolutionary road: Nourah Al Awad, Mila Alzahrani, Dae Al Hilali
Credits and SynopsisNobel pursuits: Rosamund Pike