Miroirs No. 3

 

Director Christian Petzold

Petzold with actress Paula Beer

MIROIRS NO. 3                   B+                                                                                           Germany  (86 mi)  2025  d: Christian Petzold

Another striking film from Christian Petzold, the maker of Yella (2007), Jerichow (2008), the first part of the Dreileben Trilogy, Beats Being Dead (Dreileben 1 - Etwas Besseres als den Tod) (2012), Barbara (2012), 2015 Top Ten List # 3 Phoenix (2014), 2018 Top Ten List #3 Transit, 2020 Top Ten List #6 Undine, and Afire (Roter Himmel) (2023), all films worth recommending, and this is no different.  No longer working within a historical framework, or a mythical tone, scaling back the ambitions and complexity in a smaller framework, offering a simpler, more minimalist premise, resembling the shortness and lightness of a François Ozon chamber drama, or even one of Éric Rohmer’s moral tales, with few characters, and the settings reduced to the bare essentials, yet this is told in a completely different manner, more distanced, introspective, and cleverly ambiguous, remaining emotionally dense while sustaining the interest throughout.  Some have described this as a Gothic fairy tale, a compilation of fantasy, imagination, and tragedy, much like 2020 Top Ten List #6 Undine, but this feels more like an odd encounter with grief, approaching the subject in an original way, turning a late summer film into a ghost story, as the film is haunted by ghosts of the past.  Once again writing his own story, premiering at the Director’s Fortnight section at Cannes, this accessible and extremely well-acted project is simply not like other films, where what starts out as one story morphs into a completely different story, adding even more interest and allure, as all the lead characters are likeable, where the audience is drawn into what will happen next.  A drama full of open secrets and the difficult search for healing, shot in the Uckermark, part of East Germany after the war, primarily using just two locations, and the linking passageway in between, where this is a portrait of people in transition, and about losing someone, as the way people deal with trauma and grief is decidedly different, yet extremely individualistic, where what works for one may not work for another.  In this case, the film views these aspects from different perspectives, like a collective community, though they all revolve around a self-absorbed central character who is our eyes and ears into what we’re seeing, offering no contextual backdrop information, yet mixing moments of absurd comedy with bleak tragedy.  Meet Laura (Petzold regular Paula Beer in their fourth collaboration), a university piano student from Berlin, who is out on a countryside jaunt with friends on a work/vacation trip when things take a tragic turn, as her overbearing boyfriend, Jakob (Philip Froissant), who she says “isn’t a proper boyfriend,” seems to be getting on her last nerve, as he’s reminded that she didn’t really want to go on this trip at all, irritated and upset that he’s forced to drive her back to the train station, until the red convertible car he’s driving suddenly swerves into an empty field and is killed on the spot, like the tragic car accident in Yella, while she is thrown away from the vehicle and is basically unharmed, but clearly in distress.  It’s a startling way for things to begin, but even more surprising is that she doesn’t wish to be taken to the hospital, but prefers to be cared for by a local woman she saw on the side of the road from the car, Betty (Barbara Auer, who starred in Petzold’s 2000 debut THE STATE I AM IN), who helps her up and walks her to her nearby home, curiously looking after her, where the two quickly become friends.  In something of a foreshadowing, it was Barbara’s face that Laura saw as they whizzed by just seconds before the crash, which takes place offscreen.

Even earlier, Laura is seen on the railing of an old bridge looking down at the water below, eventually making her way down to the river’s edge where she quietly takes in the natural sounds of birds and the trees rustling in the wind, staring silently as a man standing in a canoe slowly paddles by, like an image from Arnold Böcklin’s painting Isle of the Dead, Isle of the Dead (painting), suggestive of the ferryman Charon on the River Styx transporting bodies to the underworld, and much like Chantal Akerman’s use of Rachmaninoff’s The Isle of the Dead symphony in The Captive (La Captive) (2000).  This all happens quietly, with no explanation, allowing viewers to soak it in and decipher what they’re seeing, but an image of death haunts this film from the outset.  Laura appears to be a shadow of herself, and everywhere in the film hangs a similar dark mood, where even before the accident she seems to have been lost in a deep void, remaining something of an enigma through the entire film, but she is simply the vehicle through which Petzold tells his story.  Unlike Nina Hoss in Yella, whose character is already dead, but doesn’t know it, Betty essentially gives Laura a new start, two women from different generations, offering her own room, a fresh set of clothes, and a supportive ally, where they make a kind of special connection, showing her how to paint a fence, and providing her own bike to ride as they roam through the countryside together, MIROIRS NO. 3 Clip | TIFF 2025  YouTube (1:24).  Rather than feel remorse, Laura is surprisingly unaffected by the loss of her friend, indicating, “I should be sad, but I’m not.”  Yet what she does do is completely disassociate herself from her past life, retreating from the world to a place where life in the countryside is more peaceful and calm, more in touch with the basic everyday realities, where there’s literally no pressure on her, perhaps feeling a little too comfortable too quickly, until it becomes clear that this family is keeping a dark secret.  She’s surprised to learn that Betty has an estranged husband Richard (Matthias Brandt) and son Max (Enno Trebs) living a short distance away, working together in a garage, as both are handymen who work on cars and can fix just about anything, which is significant as Betty has a dripping faucet, a broken dishwasher, and a few other items in need of repair, but she’s hesitant to ask them, as they’ve grown apart recently.  Nonetheless, they all get together for a meal of potato and dumplings that Laura prepares, which goes well, like a peace offering, but the men are extremely reticent, as if remaining suspicious of Betty’s newly discovered friend, where what they all have in common is an inability to express their feelings, which leaves much unsaid and unexplained.  Repair appears to be a metaphor for broken families, with the drama focusing on the various ways a family can recover from its losses, as there’s something lingering under the surface, a common theme in multiple Petzold films.  Repairing the damage we see all around us is becoming more commonplace in the modern world, as so much is being destroyed right before our eyes, yet what’s interesting is that the filmmaker makes viewers aware of each new character’s point of view simply by the way scenes are shot by his longtime cameraman Hans Fromm, who has worked with Petzold since the beginning, creating a formally concealed world founded purely on carefully calibrated gazes and nuanced actions.  Christian Petzold is a skilled storyteller, and these multiple perspectives provide what amounts to subjective feelings and objective truths, establishing a rhythm of their subsequent interactions through a precision-based choreography of motion.

One of the best contemporary filmmakers, Petzold belongs to the Berlin School of Films, distinguished by the clarity of the places the characters inhabit, a house, a garden, a fence, the sun-kissed fields, a country road, a garage, where every detail reveals the feelings of the characters.  Music also plays a prominent part of the film, where the entitled impressionistic piece from Maurice Ravel is often heard in the background during the many travels through the countryside, Adriana von Franqué: Maurice Ravel - Une barque sur l'océan (Official Music Video) - MIROIRS NO. 3 YouTube (7:46).  One of the small moments that stands out in the early scenes is that Laura possesses a rare gift, as within seconds she can easily recognize what key a song is in that happens to be playing on the car radio.  We only later learn that she’s a piano student, with Betty expressing an interest in hearing her play, choosing a very recognizable Chopin piece, Prélude Op. 28, No. 4, considered to be one of the most famous of the Chopin preludes, which was played in its entirety by Jack Nicholson in Bob Rafelson’s FIVE EASY PIECES (`1970), five easy pieces - the chopin scene YouTube (3:13).  Laura’s level of comfort reaches a peak with a song playing in the garage when she arrives, sharing a beer with Max as they listen to an oldie but goodie from 1972, Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons - The Night (Official Audio) YouTube (3:25), with its infectious rhythm and beat, both seemingly swooning with happiness until she gets too close, where he violently pushes her away, knocking her to the ground, causing her to run away in utter fright at seemingly having unleashed a monster.  While the film contains many silences, smoking a cigarette in the evening light, or Betty standing at the front gate in the middle of the night when she can’t sleep, as if waiting for someone to arrive, the film slowly fills in the blanks, where Laura’s presence reminds this broken family of Betty’s daughter who tragically took her own life, with Laura situated in her room, wearing her old clothes, a constant reminder of what the family has lost.  With possible references to Otto Preminger’s Laura (1944), Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958), or even Aki Kaurismäki’s THE MAN WITHOUT A PAST (2002), Laura offers a kind of identity substitution, yet she is no substitute for the family’s unending pain.  While the source of Laura’s anguish is unknown, Betty’s torment, on the other hand, is more clearly defined, as her family is carrying a recognizable trauma that visibly affects her life.  While both women have lost something, this film is not a tragedy, revealing instead how silence, restraint, and subtle emotion can make a deep impression.  It’s an interesting scenario, as it starts out being about Laura, but quickly turns into the dysfunctional family dynamic of Betty, where viewers can only imagine what they all feel.  That violent moment in the garage, however, seems to have awakened Laura from her reverie, as this little excursion into the countryside has made her painfully aware of everyone’s deficiencies, deciding immediately to return back to her life in Berlin, leaving without so much as uttering a word.  While remaining a quintessential women’s film, like Douglas Sirk’s All That Heaven Allows (1955), essentially this is the tale of a return to life, with all that entails, the perception of a new light, or a positive wind, which translates into moments of absolute tenderness or even carefree joy, but also the hesitations, the uncertainties, and the embarrassment of those who must learn to feel again.  In the end we see Laura back at the conservatory playing her graduation piece, which is a return to the evocative Ravel piece, the third movement (A Boat on the Ocean) from a larger five-movement suite entitled Miroirs, filled with imagery and mood, yet what it evokes is the exact moment when the broken figures are reassembled, bringing the film full circle with an unconventional finale, offering no real revelation, instead conveying transcendence through art, though not quite having the same impact as the utterly sublime Debussy piece played at the end of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s TOKYO SONATA (2008), Tôkyô sonata - Kiyoshi Kurosawa (2008) - ending. YouTube (7:13).