Director – Christian Petzold – 2025 – Germany – Cert. 15 – 86m
**1/2
A traumatised woman who survives a car crash moves in with a woman living near the crash site, unaware that the second woman is not what she seems – out in UK cinemas on Friday, April 17th
She stares out from a bridge, watches the water go by from underneath it. Returning home, she’s lost her bag. Her partner wants to know where she’s been. Anyway, Debbi (Victoire Laly) and Roger (Marcel Heupermann) are waiting. The four go off in the car. While her partner and Roger swap notes on the song playing on the car sound system, Laura (Paula Beer from Afire, Christian Petzold, 2023; Transit, Christian Petzold, 2019; Never Look Away, Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, 2018, Frantz, François Ozon, 2016) is distracted, noticing a woman standing in her driveway as they pass. When they stop to check their itinerary, Laura just stands there. She wants to go home, telling partner Jakob (Philip Froissant) she isn’t feeling well.
Driving Laura to the station in the other couple’s car, so she can go home while the other three carry on as planned, Jakob nearly collides with the woman on the drive. The latter observes their crash. Jakob has dashed his brains against a rock. Laura lies, thrown from the car. The woman helps her to her house, where paramedics attend. Laura decides to stay at the woman’s house. Laura introduces herself as the other tucks her into bed. The other is Betty (Barbara Auer from Transit; The Book Thief, Brian Percival, 2013).
Travelling into town behind Betty on her bike, Laura offers to cook Konigsberg dumplings. This surprises Betty since it’s both the one thing she can’t cook and the favourite meal of her husband and son, Richard and Max. But, she warns, don’t tell them about the leaky tap or the broken washing machine, because they’re tradespeople who will try and fix them then and there. Richard (Matthias Brandt from Afire; Transit) and Max (Enno Trebs from Köln 75, Ido Fluk, 2025; Afire; The White Ribbon, Michael Haneke, 2009) have just fixed a car at their garage when they get the phone invitation. She’s off her pills, says Richard.
At the dinner, the pair are perturbed first by the empty chair and then by the arrival of Laura bearing Konigsberg dumplings, complete with her explanation of who she is and what she’s doing there. The menfolk seem to be enjoying the dumplings, but the sound of the dripping tap gets their attention. So Laura throws in the fact that the washing machine’s broken, to Betty’s horror. The menfolk get both fixed, and Richard compliments the chef. Betty is less than impressed with their behaviour. She also arranges for them to fix up a bike for Laura.
As the menfolk’s visits become more frequent as a direct result of Laura’s cooking, some strange visitors appear outside the house, giving everyone cause for concern except Laura, who has no idea what is going on. (Nor, frankly, do the audience have any idea what’s going on at this point – it’s never explained.) To take their mind off things, Betty has Laura play the piano she has just had retuned. (Laura is a student of the instrument at university.) Later, when she’s alone, the washing machine blows up! So she goes round to the garage to talk to Max about it and they sit down for a beer. But they’re interrupted by the arrival of Richard, who is deeply upset and orders her to go back to Betty’s.
With Betty and Richard in Berlin buying a new washing machine, Laura goes to the garage to see Max but everything goes horribly wrong…
Earlier on, the briefest of hints are delivered about Betty, Richard and Max being a family unit that has suffered a terrible loss. In fact, a loss so terrible that it has ripped them into two camps – her, still living in the same house, and the two men who are living somewhere else (quite possibly on the garage premises, but equally possibly somewhere else – this is never made clear.
What it means for traumatised car crash victim Laura, who acts as the tale’s viewpoint, is that her convenient place of refuge is not quite what it appears to be, that she has not been taken in by not as at first appears to be the case a kindly woman who wants to help her, but rather a woman with psychological issues with which she has not fully come to terms.
Thus the final reel, in which everything comes to light and the dynamics of the situation in which the characters change rapidly, with Laura’s hitherto unseen father (Christian Koerner from Retribution, Nimród Antal, 2023) being seen to intervene, is far more compelling than the hour or so preceding it. There is even a hint of Betty being a possessive mother not a million miles away from those in the films of Alfred Hitchcock – but don’t get your hopes up; the current offering is nowhere near that calibre.
The car crash a few minutes in is cheaply staged so that it’s reduced to an aftermath with a car on its side, a shot (undeniably impressive in itself) of the driver with his brains dashed out, and a view of the unconscious girl who, trauma notwithstanding, has miraculously survived.
Unfortunately, the hour or so between that crash and the scene where everything comes to a head between Laura and Max in the garage is something of a plod in which it feels like the material is stretched to fill an hour or so of running time. Perhaps this could have made a really striking film of about 50 minutes in length, the problem being that that running length doesn’t really lend itself to commercial cinema distribution.
The opening up to the car crash is intriguing, suggesting that Laura may be suffering from some sort of mental illness yet to be diagnosed, yet, curiously, the remainder of the narrative never really follows through on this beyond her strange decision to stay with Betty in her home after the crash. And curiously, actress Paula Beer doesn’t convey the trauma you might expect, almost as if director Petzold had forgotten to give her any direction.
The final reel is by far the most compelling part of the film, if you haven’t given up on it before then.
Petzold is the writer-director of Afire (2023) and Transit (2019) among others, of which both are worth seeing and neither feel stretched and padded out the way the current film does. What’s particularly infuriating is that Laura’s personal and family backgrounds are never explored, which might have mined a rich seam in terms of character study. As it stands, the film remains deeply dissatisfying.
Miroirs No.3 is out in cinemas in the UK on Friday, April 17th.
Trailer: