Miroirs No. 3

Christian Petzold remains one of the great filmmakers of the 21st century, which makes Miroirs No. 3 all the more disappointing. Like many of his best works, the film is built around a magnetic female protagonist, this time Paula Beer’s Laura, a young music student who survives a car crash that kills her boyfriend. Petzold and cinematographer Hans Fromm once again create a beautifully contained world, one so intimate and carefully observed that it gradually feels detached from everything beyond its borders.

Initially framed as a story of recovery, the film follows Laura as she stays with Betty (Barbara Auer), the woman who discovered the crash and took her in afterward. Betty, her husband Richard, and their son Max form a household defined less by what is said than by what remains unspoken. As days turn into weeks, Petzold slowly builds an atmosphere of unease, hinting that Laura’s presence means more to the family than simple generosity would suggest.

The problem arrives when the film finally reveals why: Laura bears a striking resemblance to the family’s recently deceased daughter. Rather than deepening Laura’s story, however, Miroirs No. 3 abruptly shifts its focus toward the family’s grief in its final act. For a film that spends most of its brief runtime investing in Laura as its central figure, the pivot feels surprisingly disorienting and undercuts much of the emotional groundwork laid beforehand. Coming from a filmmaker who has repeatedly demonstrated a remarkable command of third-act payoffs, the choice never fully clicked for me.

The strengths that define Petzold’s work are still present. His restrained, precise style remains compelling, and Beer once again proves to be an ideal collaborator, bringing a quiet mystery to Laura that sustains the film through its strongest stretches. But the pieces never quite come together into something satisfying or fully earned. The lukewarm reception the film received feels more justified than I wanted it to. Even great filmmakers miss occasionally, and Miroirs No. 3 ultimately stands as one of Petzold’s weaker efforts—a disappointment made sharper only because the standard he’s set is so high.