Final Rating: 3.5/5
The latest film from the quiet German auteur Christian Petzold is Miroirs No. 3, once again stars his go to muse Paula Beer who has acted in his three most recent films (Afire, Undine and Transit).
We are introduced to Laura (Beer) who seems lost and confused in the world. She is a music student at a university in Berlin and doesn’t seem content in her relationship. While on a day trip in the countryside, Laura and her boyfriend Jakob (Philip Froissant) get into a car accident that kills Jakob instantly and barely leaves a scratch on herself. Moments before the car flipped over, Jakob had almost hit a woman standing on the side of the road painting her fence with Laura and this woman making intense eye contact with each other. In a daze, Laura tells the paramedics that she will be staying with this woman, who appears to live alone.
Betty (Barbara Auer) accepts Laura into her home and gives her a place to stay while she mentally recovers from the crash and avoids returning back to her life in the city. She offers Laura a private bedroom and some fresh clothes. Slowly as Laura is wanting to be out and about more, she helps Betty around the house including finishing painting her fence, tending to her garden that has been neglected and helping out with chores around the house.
Although not everything seems normal for these two women. For one, it takes them quite a while to even exchange names, and they reveal next to none of their back story with each other. This leads to long moments of silence with the viewer left to question Betty’s intentions with this woman who has now intruded into her life. We also get a moment where Betty accidentally calls Laura, Yelena, before quickly correcting herself with no follow up to who Yelena might be with suspicions arising.
As a thank you for letting her stay, Laura wishes to cook a specific dish for Betty, and when she reveals that it is her “men’s” favourite dish, we finally start to learn a bit more about Betty. She apparently has a husband and adult son, Richard (Matthias Brandt) and Max (Enno Trebs). When the men are invited over for dinner, without knowing about Laura, things get uncomfortable for them quickly.
Betty has set out four sets of plates for the three people, with Richard and Max noting that she needs to get over what is haunting her, revealing that there used to be a daughter in the family unit that has since caused a great deal of pain. When it is revealed that Laura is the fourth member of the dinner party, the guys relax a bit but notice that she is wearing someone else’s clothes and the bedroom she is occupying was clearly someone else’s.
From there we slowly unravel the mystery of why this family is fractured, who Yelena is and what Laura’s presence in their lives means to them. The film has an eeriness to it that is hard to explain. There are long moments of silence and when the two women do talk to each other you feel like Betty has ulterior motives while Laura seemingly parachuting into the life of someone else feels like she may have planned it.
Information comes out slowly, always a few scenes after viewers will think, ‘that’s odd, what does that mean?’, constantly leaving room for doubt and intentionality. It is also worth wondering if Laura is a walking magical realism character? We are introduced to her, confused at her surroundings, distant and seemingly lost. She feels no emotion when her boyfriend dies and the fact that she escapes an accident with literally a cut so insignificant that she doesn’t need stitches or further medical attention (not to mention the car looking like it also came out unscathed) certainly raises questions. Add in the unsettling moment of Laura and Betty staring at each like they know each other moments before the wreck, makes the viewer feel askew.
The performances are purposely stilted, with all four of the main characters removing themselves from emotion in most scenes. The few times the temperature gets raised even by a few degrees lead to big blow ups. There is a scene where Max confronts Laura for occupying a space that isn’t hers and it’s the moment in the film where we learn the most about this new family unit.
At a brisk 90 minutes, it feels like the film could tell a larger story, but instead it focuses on a small moment in time when Betty, Richard and Max are grieving and need help to get their lives back on track. Laura herself seems like Betty and her family have the ability to heal her as her own wounds are inside and not caused by a car accident.
The film ends suddenly, but still feels like it comes with healing. There is a decent amount of humour too that helps make the uncomfortable moments pass and holds the movie solidly in the drama category, where it easily could have been shifted to horror with a few slight adjustments. Beer and Auer are fantastic together as they each are trying to get the nourishment they need from one another. Some of the moments of drama do feel a bit predictable and ultimately the revelations aren’t are grandiose as the set up leads us to believe, even if it is still a worthwhile story.
In the end, its a film that likely won’t work with everyone but the way the mystery is unraveled is worth the price of admission anyways.
Miroirs No. 3 was seen during the 2025 Vancouver International Film Festival.
