Ella Rumpf impresses by trying to solve Marguerite's Theorem (review)

Anna Novion's film was noticed on the Croisette last May, before offering the César for Most Promising Actress to its lead actress.

Presented at the Cannes Film Festival in the 2023 official selection, during a special screening and crowned with the Grand Audience Prize at the Cabourg Film Festival a few months later, Marguerite's theorem recently offered its leading actress the César for Most Promising Actress.

For that alone, its broadcast on Canal + this evening is worth a look: Ella Rumpf is perfect in the skin of this young mathematician opposite Jean-Pierre Darroussin.

Ella Rumpf – seen before this in the film Severe by Julia Ducournau – plays Marguerite, “brilliant student in Mathematics at ENS, whose future seems clear. The only girl in her class, she is finishing a thesis which she must present in front of an audience of researchers. On the big day, an error shakes up all his certainties and the building collapses. Marguerite decides to leave everything to start again.”

Directed by Anna Novionwho co-wrote the film with Mathieu Robin, Marie-Stéphane Imbert and Agnès Feuvre, Marguerite's theorem won over the editorial staff. Here is our review:

With this third feature film in fifteen years (after The big people And Meet in Kiruna), Anna Novion manages to fascinate us with a mathematician character whose trajectory initially seems marked out. Marguerite – played to perfection by Ella Rumpf – is finishing a math thesis at the ENS when she suddenly gives up her studies to experience a more adventurous life in the heart of Paris. Riveted to the emotions of a heroine who feels out of step with the world, this learning story passes through different atmospheres (the shy mathematician will become a formidable Mah-jong player in dark rooms) and is based on a setting in an energizing scene thanks to which this filmic, intellectual and sentimental theorem is resolved hands down.

Ella Rumpf: “I want to work in France more and more”