MIROIRS NO 3

“Christian Petzold (Afire, Undine) returns with this small delight. This latest is partly a Rohmerian visit to the countryside, but with elements of a Bergman identity-slip chamber piece, and even Hitchcockian psychodrama.

Working as usual with cinematographer Hand Fromm, Miroirs No. 3 is shot in Petzold’s typically light and unfussy style. This lends the drama, even as it turns mysterious and slightly sinister, a deftness of touch matched by the performance of Paula Beer.

This is Beer’s fourth lead role for Petzold, and one that confirms them as one of the best actor-director collaborations in contemporary European cinema.”

“German director Christian Petzold, the Chabrol of modern European cinema, delivers an elegant and disquieting psychological mystery of the sort that doesn’t interest today’s British film-makers, though this one appears to have more than a taste of PD James or Ruth Rendell.

There’s also a hint of Joseph Losey’s Accident. It is about family dysfunction and grief and unnervingly lays out the aftermath of a sudden violent trauma. The faint suggestion that the film itself has gone into a kind of shock could have layered the proceedings with something infinitesimally dreamlike and unreal, an atmosphere often to be found in Petzold’s films. What makes this film interesting is that it isn’t heading for a macabre twist or chilling denouement but something positive and even redemptive.”

Film Facts

• The title Miroirs No. 3, references Ravel’s piano composition also known as ‘Une barque sur l’océan’.
• Director Petzold heavily based the relationship between Laura and Betty on Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Vertigo.
• Paula Beer was eight months pregnant during the reshoots of the film’s ending scene.