Film: Film “The Equation of Her Life”: One Million Dollar Question

Do you know Goldbach’s conjecture? Well, quite simply, the main thesis of one of the oldest problems in mathematics, formulated back in 1742, is: Any even number greater than 2 is the sum of two prime numbers. Okay, you can understand that even if the math lessons were a while ago. But many people have already lost their teeth trying to prove this simple-sounding claim. In 2000, the British publisher Faber and Faber even offered a reward of one million dollars to anyone who could confirm the correctness of Goldbach’s conjecture. No one has won the prize money yet.

In the Swiss-French production “The Equation of Her Life” by Anna Novion, which was shown at the Special Screenings in Cannes in 2023, Marguerite, a student at the renowned Parisian École Normale Supérieure (ENS), wants to solve this infamous problem of mathematics in her life Solve dissertation.

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The film starts in a similar atmosphere to many films in this genre that revolve around math geniuses – just think of “A Beautiful Mind” or “The Theory of Everything”: the mousy mathematician Marguerite is the only woman in the doctoral program of her sober and ambitious doctoral supervisor Professor Werner (Jean-Pierre Darroussin), who is also the emotional reference point for Marguerite, who grew up with a single mother, in her second home at the university.

Ella Rumpf (“Tiger Girl”) embodies this out-of-touch super-intellectual, who doesn’t give a thought to how she affects others, extremely believably. However, Professor Werner suddenly has hardly any time left for the brilliant young woman who flops around the university in her comfortable slippers. Instead, his interest now turns to his new male protégé Lucas (Julien Frison), who recently moved to the ENS from Oxford. When Marguerite then presents parts of her work for the first time to an all-male research committee, Lucas discovers a serious error in her calculations and exposes her to everyone. That’s too much for the emotionally underdeveloped 25-year-old. Full of self-doubt and hurt pride, she simply throws everything away and leaves the university.

While looking for a temporary job to repay her scholarship, she meets Noa (Sonia Bonny) and moves in with her. Although the two are very different, the passionate dancer and the dedicated mathematician inspire each other. Noa admires Marguerite’s outspoken nature, and Marguerite in turn copies some of the freedoms that Noa takes as a woman. With Noa, Novion brings an interesting variable into play; the unusual friendship with her is far more exciting than Marguerite’s life, which is completely focused on mathematics – especially since she doesn’t come across as particularly likeable at first. This part, as well as her conflict with her professor and her bizarre-comic affair with a young man, whom the sexually inexperienced Marguerite bluntly hits on and asks for sex, could have been expanded upon a bit.

Marguerite’s discovery of the highly complex game of Mahjong, in which she becomes a luminary in no time and soon earns her money in the city’s gambling dens, is also only touched on. An intellectual nerd who is forced by his first-time failure to get to know other facets of life is simply the more interesting story – Novion should have focused more on that in order to fully captivate the audience. Instead, she lets Marguerite return too quickly to the solution to Goldbach’s theorem: This time, Marguerite, who has matured a little emotionally, turns directly to Lucas in order to tackle the problem with him. First of all, however, the two of them have to find a common denominator in their interactions with each other, because Lucas is a person who, in addition to his passion for mathematics, also has other interests and is much more communicative and approachable.

Finally, the two of them start with wild calculations and, until they are completely exhausted, scribble all over the entire walls of the room that they had previously painted black. This seems quite redundant, but perhaps not for math-savvy viewers, because the equations you see in the film are all correct. The mathematician Ariane Mézard, as the film’s technical advisor, carefully calculated everything and even came across new, interesting solutions to Goldbach’s conjecture during the production of the drama.

Ultimately, Novion misses out on some of the interesting approaches that the story offers, so in this case the whole is unfortunately less than the sum of its parts.

“The equation of her life”, France, Switzerland 2023. Director: Anna Novion. With: Ella Rumpf, Jean-Pierre Darroussin, Julien Frison. 112 min. Start: June 27th

With Noa, Novion brings an interesting variable into play; the unusual friendship with her is far more exciting than Marguerite’s life, which is completely focused on mathematics.

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