Ella Rumpf received the César for Most Promising Actor this evening for her role in “Le Théorème de Marguerite”. A first recognition for an actress on the rise in France, Europe and internationally.
“A role I never thought I could play, in real life…” Very moved and surprised by her César for Most Promising Actress, Ella Rumpf, revelation of Marguerite’s Theorem, received her trophy from the hands of Nadia Tereszkiewicz, and Bastien Bouillon, crowned in 2023 respectively for Les Amandiers and for La Nuit du 12.
The Franco-Swiss actress, who discovered thanks to the feature film by Anna Novion “that mathematics could be poetry”, portrays an atypical heroine, launched into an exciting quest. A look back at the journey of this actress to follow.
An actress who likes to hide behind her characters
After being disturbed on the screen of Julia Ducournau’s Grave, fascinated by the series Tokyo Vice, or even visiting the world of Succession, Ella Rumpf dazzled the Croisette last May, on the screen of Marguerite’s Theorem, in the shoes of a brilliant researcher in Mathematics at the ENS, who after an error detected during the presentation of her thesis, sees her certainties collapse. She then decides to leave everything to (re)start living.
It was precisely in Cannes that we spoke with the luminous actress, delighted to talk about this astonishing film, with an original subject and a decidedly thrilling plot.
Me who never liked math!
“The meeting with Anna Novion, the director of Marguerite’s Theorem, was immediately very strong and we had very interesting conversations around passion and how you approach work and how seriously you can take it. I wasn’t sure at first about taking on such a role, since I never liked math! This world that I didn’t know at all really opened up to me!”
Knowing how to delicately establish the atmosphere that reigns within the grandes écoles, the confinement and the blindness to the world that results from it when work counts at all costs, Anna Novion’s film in fact acutely paints an atypical heroine, “funny” in the astonishing sense of the term, trying to find a place in a world where feelings have no place in the face of the tangibility of figures and the quest for the ultimate scientific truth.
A heroine that her interpreter especially did not want “case” and which she constructed through discussions with her director, aiming among other things to find her look and “her slippers” as much as “its nuances of humor”, in order to alleviate the demanding subject of Mathematics.
A subject for which the spectator is immediately passionate without needing to be keen on the subject, embarked in spite of himself alongside this die-hard and clumsy character, who crosses the world and interacts with others not without difficulty . Uncomfortable in her personal life as much as rigid in her professional life (inhabited by an implacable Jean-Pierre Daroussin), Marguerite will see her framed universe, made of well-arranged geometric lines, gradually fade away as the feelings and THE meeting (with the charismatic Julien Frison) will make everything boil over.
I love overdoing it!
It is because reflection on pace and posture are at the heart of her work of embodiment that Ella Rumpf manages to take us through the world “no frills” of its heroine, eager to “bringing order to infinity” in order to silence his original anxieties.
“I love playing with that, doing a little too much, being allowed to get lost in another world.” “Walk as if on a line, don’t fall, find the right balance, transform this character, discover your path, a new path by trying things.” This is what is hardest and most important according to this young chameleon actress, who also likes to hide behind her characters to better tell their story.
A chameleonic and eclectic actress, on all fronts
“I don’t want to show myself too much. I actually started acting with a shaved head in the film Chrieg. Removed from my feminine appearance, I began my relationship with my femininity and my profession in a rather particular way.she ends up telling us. “Shy”it describes itself above all “naive” at the beginning, having always wanted to make films or act in films and having started with innocence, simply looking for casting directors.
“It was as I grew up that I realized that it was a complex, non-superficial profession, a research profession that I really appreciate.” A profession that she likes to explore from all angles and on all fronts, moving without complexes from the provocative auteur cinema of Julia Ducournau to the renowned and demanding series that are Tokyo Vice or even Succession in which she made a remarkable appearance.
HBO
“Seriously, it was a great first film for all of us and one that united us, where we exceeded a certain limit but without thinking about it. The memory of certain scenes comes afterwards! I was and I am proud to be part of this work which remains in people’s heads, which continues to travel, who left his mark and who we still talk about. I read the script on a train, I wasn’t immediately able to “get into” the film, to understand in which direction it was going. I didn’t have the experience for that. Then, I didn’t immediately catch the route the film was taking because I went back to Switzerland, to Germany and I turned left and right.”
Left to right and straight ahead above all, because it was at this moment that she integrated the varied world of series: German detective series (Freud), Japanese (Tokyo Vice) or American (Succession). “I joined this universe naturally, without anticipating, very happy to be part of it and to discover completely different worlds, especially with Tokyo Vice and Japan, a rather exceptional experience to enter this world of yakusa from the 90s“.
When asked about her predilections, she answers without hesitation watching more films than series which take up too much of the time… which she doesn’t have. “I like going to a theater and watching a film on the big screen, I am a caring spectator who likes when films resonate within you”. Like those that she herself proposes and embodies on a European and little by little international scale.