AtanariaAnna Novion’s Le Théorème de Marguerite (2023) is a cinematic alchemy of logic and lyricism, a film that transforms the esoteric world of advanced mathematics into a deeply human story of resilience. At its core lies Marguerite, a doctoral student at Paris’ prestigious École Normale Supérieure, whose meticulously constructed life unravels during a catastrophic thesis defense. Played with magnetic intensity by Ella Rumpf, this socially awkward genius becomes an unlikely guide through a narrative that celebrates the beauty of imperfection and the redemptive power of starting over.
The film opens as a cerebral character study, immersing viewers in Marguerite’s regimented world of equations and proofs. Her existence is one of sterile lecture halls and solitary nights hunched over notebooks, a rhythm shattered when a fatal error in her calculations surfaces during her public defense. This seismic failure forces her to abandon academia, setting in motion a metamorphosis as profound as any mathematical breakthrough. Novion cleverly frames mathematics not as cold abstraction but as a living, breathing art form—a parallel to the creative struggles of filmmaking itself, where structure and spontaneity must coexist.
Ella Rumpf’s performance is nothing short of revelatory. She embodies Marguerite’s intellectual ferocity through minute physical details: the defensive hunch of shoulders, fingers twitching as if mentally solving equations mid-conversation, eyes that flicker between calculation and vulnerability. As Marguerite tentatively navigates relationships—with a charming fellow mathematician (Julien Frison) and a bohemian roommate (Sonia Bonny)—Rumpf peels back layers of emotional armor without sacrificing the character’s prickly authenticity. It’s a masterclass in subtlety, balancing the character’s “froideur” with glimmers of wry humor and fragile hope.
Novion’s visual storytelling mirrors this emotional journey. The clinical geometry of academic spaces gives way to Marguerite’s chaotic apartment, where she begins scrawling equations across walls like a mathematician possessed. These scenes of creative frenzy contrast sharply with luminous sequences in Paris’ Chinatown, where the clatter of mahjong tiles becomes a counterpoint to mathematical logic. Pascal Bideau’s haunting score bridges these worlds, its melodies oscillating between precision and wild improvisation.
Beneath its mathematical framework, the film grapples with universal themes. Marguerite’s isolation as the sole woman in her cohort underscores the quiet battles women face in male-dominated STEM fields. Her evolving relationship with Jean-Pierre Darroussin’s curmudgeonly mentor reveals the generational toll of intellectual obsession, while Clotilde Courau delivers a quietly devastating turn as a mother who idolizes her daughter’s genius yet struggles to connect with the woman beneath.
What elevates Le Théorème beyond typical redemption arcs is its refusal to sanitize Marguerite’s complexity. The script allows her to remain gloriously abrasive, her social missteps played for uncomfortable laughs rather than sentimental growth. A disastrous romantic encounter becomes both cringe comedy and poignant character study, while her gradual embrace of life’s messiness feels earned rather than contrived. Novion maintains taut narrative tension throughout, crafting what critics have dubbed a “thriller of emotions” where the stakes are nothing less than a woman’s rediscovery of her own humanity.
Premiering to acclaim at Cannes and awarded Best Music at La Baule, the film has been hailed as a “minor miracle” of storytelling. It joins the pantheon of French cinema that finds profundity in specificity—here, the niche world of higher mathematics becomes a lens for examining creativity itself. As Marguerite learns to wield numbers not as armor but as a language for understanding life’s chaos, viewers witness the birth of an artist in the most unexpected guise.
Le Théorème de Marguerite ultimately transcends its academic trappings to ask a question as old as Euclid: How do we rebuild when our defining truths crumble? In Marguerite’s journey from derailed prodigy to something far more interesting—a flawed, curious human—Novion offers an answer as elegant as any theorem: We begin again, not despite the unknowns, but because of them.
