Mirrors No. 3 2025 Movie Review Trailer

Cannes: Petzold's latest film lacks the perverse psychological force that made films like "Phoenix" and "Barbara" so profound, but it still offers another magnificent showcase for actress Paula Beer.

Christian Petzold's ethereal latest film, "Mirrors No. 3," is as compact as a novella, as ephemeral in its emotion, as delicate in its register as one of the Chopin or Ravel pieces that run through it. A mysterious woman, standing on a bridge, lost in thought. An amnesiac seeking respite. An overturned car, the driver's brains splattered across the road while his passenger watches, unharmed. Later, he eats apples in a bed belonging to another woman, wearing that woman's daughter's clothes, tasting another life almost as a joke.

Director: Christian Petzold
Writer: Christian Petzold
Stars: Paula Beer, Philip Froissant, Barbara Auer

German filmmaker Petzold arrives at Cannes for the first time with a new, understated drama that delves into the psyche despite its brief runtime and almost perverse refusal to explain itself or the forms its narrative takes. The title comes from a piece by Ravel—yes, the one you probably recognize from the trailer for "Call Me by Your Name"—but the affiliations with summer love idylls and the transition to adulthood end there. Writing and directing a screenplay that evolved during the making of his last feature, "Afire," Petzold has never been less communicative, and cinematographer Hans Fromm's images never overdone it. 

Nor does his frequent collaborator, Paula Beer, who oscillates with a silvery, slippery fluidity between states of bewilderment and shock. "Mirrors" is another superb example of what makes her alchemy with Petzold so successful. She plays Laura, a pianist in an unsatisfying relationship whose boyfriend, almost at the beginning of the film, causes a rather sudden (and undramatic) car accident—he's behind the wheel and is now dead. Nearby, a middle-aged woman, Betty (Barbara Auer), is painting a white picket fence, an almost clichéd image of the structures we surround ourselves with to feel safe and comforted in the face of the changing climate of potential emotional ruin. Did her presence (or appearance) cause the accident? Laura eventually stumbles out of the wreckage and up the stairs to Betty's house, where she receives Betty's kindness. 

As the pieces of Betty's past fall into place, we can see where this story is headed: Laura becomes a surrogate daughter to Betty as she establishes a new routine, much like that of a mother and daughter. Petzold has already made more ambitious cinematic statements, from the amnesiac homage to Hitchcock, "Phoenix" (starring his former muse, Nina Hoss, as a Holocaust survivor whose facial disfigurement allows her to impersonate another person in order to win back her ex-husband), to "Transit," starring Franz Rogowski and telling a World War II story set in Berlin, but with an anachronistically modern aesthetic. Petzold's last film, "Afire," felt like one of those 1980s auteur films that someone like Éric Rohmer might make, with characters chatting over a long lunch about their hopes, fears, and problems, dissecting them to the point of unforgivable self-loathing.

"Mirrors No. 3" has a touch of Rohmer in its deceptively effervescent quality. Clocking in at under 90 minutes—making it an immediate counter to arguments that there were once excesses, especially in an era where two and a half hours has become the standard runtime—Petzold's latest film isn't particularly emotional. Nor is its protagonist, played by Beer, the actress from "Transit," "Undine," and "Afire," especially inscrutable. But Beer's performance is another brilliant marvel, a stark contrast to the dreamy, manic, and eccentric girl she portrayed in "Afire."

“Mirrors No. 3” is often as bewildered as its main character, with narrative ellipses that defy any solution or understanding. The connections here are like static electricity. Laura’s sudden and seemingly supernatural ability to bake Koeningsburg dumplings for her hostess’s husband and son comes out of nowhere. After all, she is a woman born of an accident and given the chance to live another life.

Watch Mirrors No. 3 2025 Movie Trailer