‘Miroirs No. 3’ Review: Christian Petzold’s Minor Key Is a Major One for His Beautifully Concussed Protagonist, Played by Paula Beer

Editor’s Note: This review was originally published during the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. 1-2 Special releases the film in theaters starting Friday, March 20, 2026.

Christian Petzold‘s gossamer latest film, “Mirrors No. 3,” is as compact as a novella, as ephemeral in its emotion, as delicate in register as one of the Chopin or Ravel pieces that float through it. A mystery woman, standing on a bridge, lost in thought. An amnesiac looking for respite. A car flipped upside down, its driver’s brains spilled onto the road while its passenger stares on, unharmed. Later, she eats apples in a bed that belongs to another woman, in clothes that belong to that woman’s daughter, trying on another life almost as a lark.

German filmmaker Petzold comes to Cannes for the first time with 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 title comes from a piece written by Ravel — yes, that one you probably know from the trailer for “Call Me By Your Name,” but the affiliations with the idylls of summer love and coming-of-age end right there. Writing and directing a script that evolved during the making of his last feature, “Afire,” Petzold has never been less forthcoming, the images from cinematographer Hans Fromm never overstating themselves. Nor does Petzold’s regular collaborator Paula Beer, who shifts with silvery, slippery ease between states of bemusement and shock. “Mirrors” is another gorgeous showcase for what makes her alchemy with Petzold succeed so well.

She plays Laura, a pianist in an unfulfilling relationship whose boyfriend, almost as soon as the movie starts, gets them into a rather suddenly (and hardly dramatically) staged car accident, he at the wheel and now dead. Nearby, a middle-aged woman, Betty (Barbara Auer), was painting a white-picket fence, an almost cliche image of the structures we surround ourselves with to feel safe and comforted against the changing weathers of potential emotional ruin. Did her presence (or appearance?) cause the accident? Laura eventually stumbles from the wreck and onto the steps of Betty’s home, and into her largesse. As the pieces of Betty’s own past come into place, we can see where this story is headed as Laura becomes a surrogate daughter for Betty while establishing a new, mother-daughter-like routine.

Petzold has made grander cinematic statements before, from the amnesiac Hitchcock homage “Phoenix” (starring his former muse Nina Hoss as a Holocaust survivor whose facial disfigurement allows her to impersonate someone else entirely to win back her estranged husband) to “Transit,” which starred Franz Rogowski and told a World War II story in Berlin but with anachronistically modern set design. Petzold’s last film, “Afire,” felt like one of those ‘80s arthouse one-offs someone like Éric Rohmer would make, with characters chatting over a lengthy luncheon about their hopes, fears, and problems, analyzing them into the unforgivable marrow of becoming sick of themselves. 

‘Mirrors No.3’Christian Schulz, © Schramm Film

“Mirrors No. 3” has a touch of Rohmer in terms of its deceptive effervescence. Running at less than 90 minutes — making it an immediate contender against the arguments that there would ever be any excess here, especially in a movie moment where two-and-a-half hours has become the standard running time — Petzold’s latest film isn’t especially giving of emotion. Nor is its lead, played by “Transit,” “Undine,” and “Afire” actress Beer, especially scrutable. But Beer’s performance is another shimmering wonder, a stark contrast to the manic-pixie-dream-girl adjacent she played in “Afire.”

In this film, Beer portrays her character as a blank waiting to be filled. Whatever is going on with her and boyfriend Jakob in the first scenes, she wants nothing to do with the work trip he is dragging her on against her will. The movie even begins with her staring out a flowing river — if you thought we were done with Petzold’s fascination with the elements after “Undine” and “Afire,” languid shots of moving water will signal otherwise — in a daze, as if she doesn’t know where she is or where she’s going. She reacts to the news of his death, and the fallout of it, with a shrug. 

When Betty starts dressing Laura in her daughter’s clothes — including a red Babybel T-shirt that almost immediately infantilizes Laura — we know we are in for some sort of Bergmanesque exchange between women, the idealizing of a complete stranger who might resemble your own dead daughter, so much so that she passes for her. The women play off each other, or with each other at other times, contrapuntally like music, which seems to have inspired the psychological structure of “Mirrors No. 3,” more about whiffs of impressions of ideas than concrete symbols.

Laura also forms a close relationship with Betty’s son (Enno Trebs), whose blond mullet and stoic face strikingly mirror those of her now-dead boyfriend Jakob. Petzold loves doubles, and particularly in a dizzied state, as a way to emphasize how the people we idealize in love may only be that ideal thing once they’re realized in the form of someone else. Someone else not quite them, not quite the man you’ve been sharing a bed with for years, but with a close enough resemblance to conjure that old-time feeling.

“Mirrors No. 3” often feels as concussed as its main heroine potentially is, with narrative elisions that defy easy solving or understanding. Connections, here, are like static electricity. Laura’s sudden, seemingly preternatural ability to make Koeningsburg Dumplings for her host’s husband and son comes from nowhere. This is a woman born from an accident, after all, and into the chance to live another life.

Grade: B

“Mirrors No. 3” premiered at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival. 1-2 Special opens the film in March 2026.

Want to stay up to date on IndieWire’s film reviews and critical thoughts? Subscribe here to our newly launched newsletter, In Review by David Ehrlich, in which our Chief Film Critic and Head Reviews Editor rounds up the best new reviews and streaming picks along with some exclusive musings — all only available to subscribers.