The films of Christian Petzold are haunted, populated by specters trapped between different worlds and realms, and in the German auteur’s latest, the appearance of such a figure destabilizes a rural family coping with loss.
Screening at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, Miroirs No. 3 is a poignant ghost story that pulsates with grief and longing, and for a writer/director whose cinema is fixated on spirits and fragmented men and women in states of transition, it’s a low-key continuation of the themes and motifs that have typified a career marked by triumphs such as Phoenix, Barbara, and Transit.
His fourth straight collaboration with sensational actress Paula Beer, it’s a beguiling psychodrama about familial fractures, slippery identity, and the difficult means by which people move on from tragedy.
The conclusion to an unofficial trilogy about the elements which began with Undine (water) and Afire (fire), Miroirs No. 3—named after Ravel’s classical music suite—feels rooted in nature, its action set in a sparsely populated stretch of countryside where the sun shines, the birds chirp, and the wind blows without respite.
It’s a place of calm and peace, although its tranquility is disrupted when city-dwellers Jakob (Philip Froissant) and Laura (Beer) visit it to meet up with Jakob’s friends Roger (Marcel Heuperman) and Debbi (Victoire Laly).
On their drive, Laura shares a powerful glance with a woman—whose name we’ll soon learn is Betty (Barbara Auer, star of Petzold’s debut The State I Am In)—who’s standing at the edge of her remote dwelling’s driveway. Upon reaching their destination, Laura informs Jakob that she feels unwell and wants to return home. Annoyed, Jakob agrees to take his girlfriend to the train station. Yet after nearly driving headfirst into the aforementioned stranger, Jakob flips his convertible, killing himself and throwing Laura from the vehicle.
Betty rushes to the scene and assists the dazed Laura back to her house. When the medics arrive, they’re amazed to discover that Laura is virtually unscathed save for a scratch on her back. More surprising, Laura doesn’t want to go to the hospital for further medical attention; she wants to stay with Betty, who readily agrees to host the young woman.
Laura goes to bed and, when she wakes, she discovers that Betty has left her two mugs on her nightstand (one with coffee, one with tea) as well as a fresh set of clothes. During their morning chat, Betty discusses treating Laura’s superficial wound and, tellingly, refers to her as “Yelena”—a momentary slip of the tongue that, given Petzold’s fondness for apparitions and doppelgangers, implies that there’s more to this dynamic than initially appears.
Miroirs No. 3 is only 86 minutes but Petzold nonetheless takes his time establishing his tale. Hearing that Laura wants to help paint her picket fence white, Betty chuckles and references Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer. Laura proves equally interested in Betty’s herb garden, which boasts a nasturtium flower that’s edible, and when passersby momentarily stop to observe her, Betty subtly scares them away while muttering “arseholes.”
Shortly thereafter, they’re joined by Betty’s husband Richard (Matthias Brandt) and son Max (Enno Trebs), who don’t live with her—a state of affairs that’s never properly explicated, amplifying the material’s sense of dislocation—and work at a garage where they earn a living disabling GPS systems for wealthy BMW and Mercedes-Benz owners. Over a dinner of Koenigsberg dumplings made by Laura, the relatives stare at each other in weighty silence, their eyes communicating the confusion, astonishment, and alarm they dare not express out loud.
Petzold lets the unspoken hang in the air for most of Miroirs No. 3, whose intrigue is augmented by compositions that suggest constriction and separation. The writer/director frames his characters in doorways and windows, often via shots from the perspective of characters watching on the other side of glass, thereby conveying their detachment and confinement.
As befitting a Petzold film, bicycles, cars, trains, and water factor into the proceedings, beginning with the opening sight of Laura pensively regarding a stream from a highway overpass, and then going down to get a closer look and, also, to witness a paddleboarder coast along the placid current. Everything and everyone are moving, it seems, from one place (and reality) to another, even as Laura stays put at her new residence, where she’s warmly embraced by Betty and slowly accepted by Richard and Max, whose perturbed countenances indicate that something about this situation is dreadfully amiss.
An offhand comment about Betty being off her pills, along with her house’s multiplying problems—including a leaky faucet and broken-down dishwasher that require repairs by handymen Richard and Max—speaks to the clan’s fundamentally damaged condition.
Petzold divulges details about their circumstances in small dribs and drabs, and when they materialize, they raise additional questions that the director keeps tantalizingly open. Clearly, Betty believes that she knows Laura—or did know her, in a prior life—and that the woman has “returned” to right that which is wrong. That’s not a straightforward process in Miroirs No. 3, and despite its third act’s increasing lucidity, it embraces mystery as its own form of truth.
Favoring melancholy images of individuals standing at gateways in the dark and gazing out windows from elevated heights over dramatic fireworks, Miroirs No. 3 invites contemplation and inquiry through rigorous focus on its pent-up protagonists and their serene milieu—a contrast that gives the proceedings its charged atmosphere.
So too does the performance of the excellent Beer, whose troubled visage is an enigma unto itself, hinting at depths of thought and emotion that lurk just beneath the surface. Even in the wake of a sudden physical altercation that leaves her with a bloody nose, her pained expression is difficult to read, and that inscrutability persists until a piano-recital performance that offers, tantalizingly, a measure of closure for all involved.
Twenty-five years after The State I Am In, Petzold remains one of international cinema’s most mesmerizing artists, exploring and navigating the literal and ethereal boundaries that separate us from one another. Fitting snugly into his accomplished oeuvre, Miroirs No. 3 may traverse somewhat familiar terrain for the director, but it enchants with a grace and sadness that envelops like a cool breeze on a warm summer day.
