German filmmaker Christian Petzold once again asks his current favorite leading lady, Paula Beer, to embody a woman dazed by trauma and taken in by the promise of romance — or at the very least, a bit of doting — with his latest dreamy feature, “Miroirs No. 3.”
Leaving behind the more literal geopolitical trauma of films like the Beer-led “Transit” or the Nina Hoss-led “Phoenix,” Petzold’s new drama centers on two women who cling to each other in the fallout of an accident. Laura (Beer), a pianist from Berlin, is begrudgingly accompanying her boyfriend on a work trip when a violent car crash instantly kills him and leaves her concussed on the side of the road. She’s then taken in by Betty (“The State I Am In” star Barbara Auer), who witnessed the crash while painting the white picket fence outside of her isolated country home.
As if Laura is the prodigal daughter returning home, the two women quickly fall into a familiar routine that bears obvious signs of something stranger, including Betty immediately volunteering her real child’s bed and clothes to the total stranger. As seen in the IndieWire-exclusive trailer for the film below, the feeling that there’s something odd about the way the women are carrying on is underscored by the arrival of Betty’s estranged husband (Matthias Brandt) and son (Enno Trebs), who are varying degrees of horrified and comforted by Laura’s presence.
While Beer’s role in the “Miroirs No. 3” is the polar opposite of the flighty seductress she played in Petzold’s 2023 drama “Afire,” the film itself has a similarly vague quality, where suffering goes largely unspoken and the landscape and interiors do much of the talking. When the feature, which was named for a Ravel solo piano composition, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May, IndieWire’s Ryan Lattanzio described it as “a minor-key new drama, which burrows into the psyche despite its slim running time and almost perverse refusal to explain itself or the shapes its narrative takes.”
The airy, enigmatic film makes sense as the successor to “Afire,” given that it’s understood to be the last in a trilogy that also includes “Undine.” Each work in the trilogy is built around Beer and an element, with “Undine” drawing on water and “Afire,” obviously, pulling from flames. Though Petzold wasn’t clear what element would shape his newest film when he started out, as he told IndieWire, he was struck by inspiration during a pre-production set visit with his stars.
“We were visiting this house, sitting on this porch. Really storming winds were coming, and during the whole shooting, this stormy wind never stops. We had the hairs from Paula, and the others, always totally disturbed, the trees always in motion,” Petzold said. “This could be that nature says, ‘This is the third part of the trilogy. It’s wind, air, and now it’s gone: You can [proceed] with a new one.’ I was sitting there on the porch, smoking a cigarette, and said, ‘OK, this is the end of the trilogy.’”
“Miroirs No. 3” releases the film in U.S. theaters on March 20. (It was originally set to be distributed by Metrograph Pictures until the New York theater’s distribution arm folded, and 1-2 Special acquired rights for the U.S.) See the full trailer below.