Review of the film “Prime Number Theory” by Anna Novion

Anna Novion’s film “The Theory of Prime Numbers” (Le theoreme de Marguerite), which participated in the program of the 2023 Cannes Film Festival, is being released. It is a variation on the theme of the “crazy genius” like “A Beautiful Mind” and similar films, and the fact that the main character here is a young woman, according to Yulia Shagelman, doesn’t really change anything.

Margarita Hoffman (Ella Rumpf received the French national Cesar film award for the most promising actress for this role) is a brilliant mathematician somewhere on the edge of the autism spectrum. We understand this from the very first frames of the film, when we see how she, a gray mouse with dirty hair, wearing glasses, an unpretentious sweater and slippers, gives an interview for the university newspaper. “You probably live nearby, that’s why you came in slippers?” – asks the journalist. “They’re comfortable,” answers Margarita, who, of course, doesn’t even think that there could be anything wrong with these shoes.

She has much more interesting things on her mind: she is one of the few female students (and certainly the most outstanding among them) in the mathematics department of the prestigious Ecole normale superieure (ENS). The authors do not miss a single opportunity to clearly contrast it in the frame with the overwhelming majority of students of the opposite sex, although gender issues here are, at best, simply indicated and are not developed in any way. Under the guidance of her professor (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), Margarita is working on a dissertation on prime numbers and is about to come up with a solution to the still unproven Goldbach problem (really existing and truly unproven, although for a humanities viewer it still sounds like white noise ).

However, at a seminar where she must demonstrate a brilliant solution to some intermediate problem, her teacher’s new mentee, Lucas (Julien Frison), who has just transferred from Oxford, finds an error in her proof. Margarita is confused and dumbfounded, and then the professor declares that he will no longer work with her and will focus on Goldbach with Lucas. The girl decides to give up mathematics, leaves ENS, moves out of the hostel and stops answering calls from her worried mother, a provincial mathematics teacher (Clotilde Coureau).

While looking for work, she meets dancer Noah (Sonia Bonnie Ebumbu in a thankless role as the all-so-uninhibited black friend) and becomes her roommate. She reveals to Margarita a life beyond mathematics, including alcohol, nightclubs, dancing and sex with the first guys she meets. Margarita herself discovers the game of mahjong for money, which becomes the source of her illegal but stable income. However, mathematics, the Goldbach problem and, as it turns out a little later, Lucas have not lost their magical appeal in her eyes, which is only enhanced by the desire to prove to the traitorous professor that abandoning her was a big mistake.

Unlike Goldbach’s problem, Prime Number Theory is a very simple equation in which the whole never exceeds the sum of its parts. The six screenwriters, including director Anna Novion, take the narrative in the most predictable directions at every turn, and cinematographer Jacques Giraud illustrates their ideas with the most predictable visual techniques – like numbers floating over the heroine’s face in double exposure, accompanied by uplifting voice-over music.

Of course, the sequence of mahjong tiles tells Margarita a formula that becomes the key to a new method of proof, and, of course, this is followed by sleepless nights, feverishly writing down numbers in a notebook and waking up at the table. Then the heroine paints the walls black so she can write on them with chalk, and then, when Goldbach’s problem turns into an obsession for her (and she, of course, does), the notes cover every free inch in the apartment, including windows, mirrors and toilet rolls paper.

The only cliche that the filmmakers, to their credit, skip: Margarita, even in her rebellious club period, does not suddenly become a beauty by taking off her glasses and washing her hair, but remains a nerdy nerd in ugly sweaters. True, the authors still organize happiness in her personal life: where a man would be content with solving a problem (and, perhaps, a Nobel Prize), a woman, in their opinion, still needs a handsome prince to boot.