“Fate” is actually much too small as a word for Christian Petzold's scenario “Miroirs No. 3“: Laura (Paula Beer) somehow stands next to herself. Nevertheless, she accompanies her boyfriend and a friend of a friend in the Red Cabrio for a weekend trip. Already on the way her eyes meet with that of Betty (Barbara Auer), who paints a garden fence on the roadside. Arrived at the finish line, she finally stops Laura, she wants to go back to Berlin. Little angry to a nearby train station.
A loud bang. Goose snakes. The convertible lies upright in the field and it looks as if the friend's brain leaves partly over a stone. Laura, on the other hand, is lucky that she was thrown out in time, with just one scratch on the back and just a few meters away from the house with the semi-finished white garden fence. The emergency paramedic thinks she doesn't have to go to the hospital – and so she just stays there, and Betty has nothing against it, even devotes yourself to her sudden patient …
An enchanted utopia
After the ambiguous “red sky”, Christian Petzold (“Yella”, “Phoenix”) delivers the next film directly, which is mainly only in a single rural summer house. But this time it's not about exposing something or someone and bumping from his high horse. Instead, Petzold can be carried away into an (almost fairytale) utopia: Laura seems to fill a gap for Betty and her Königsberg Klopse loving craftsman men-her husband Richard (Matthias Brandt) and her son Max (Enno Trebs). Anyone in the audience can count on two fingers. But whatever else likes to be used as a fabric for Gothic horror when the mistress of the castle suddenly believes in a mysterious visitor's daughter in a mysterious visitor has nothing abyss at all.
First, things are repaired, after the garden fence of the tap, the dishwasher, the bike with the broken saddle rod. People and finally the family follow. Paula Beer (“Stella. A Life”) does not actually do much more than meeting people around them with open -minded curiosity. Nevertheless, she almost looks like a fairy on her bike that has literally crashed into this enchanted place in order to initiate an all -encompassing healing process as a catalyst. It feels completely enchanted and is also seasoned with a lot of fine humor. It is even laughed really loudly a few times, which usually has to do with the men's craftsmanship.
Already the first to drive past, there is a connection between Laura (Paula Beer) in the convertible and Betty (Barbara Auer) on the garden fence.
“Miroirs No. 3” is actually the exact opposite of his, at least when listening to the first time, taps, somehow that sounds like that sounds after university house tasks. It was easy to make the mistake of calling it a “secondary work”, since it is the highest art to tell a film with such a supposedly simple but absolute clarity. Precisely because Maurice Ravel's piano piece of the same name also plays an important role in the film, several English -language reviews were drawn to the pun after the world premiere in Cannes that the film is “”minor key“ – so muffled, fine, maybe a little melancholy.
And that's all right. But above all, he is hopeful in a pleasantly unobtrusive way. “Miroirs No. 3” invites you to dream that such an unlikely election family utopia could actually be possible-especially since music increasingly sounds increasingly enchanted. It is almost a shock when we have to find that “Miroirs No. 3” plays very well in the real world despite everything. But even then Petzold remains generous, including the audience, but above all his characters. No kitsch guarantees, but in a subtle way beautiful.
Conclusion: Despite the catastrophe at the start, so light -footed and sensitive that you think the summer in the pictures is really like.
We saw “Miroirs No. 3” at the Cannes Film Festival 2025, where he celebrated his world premiere in the “Directors' Fortnight” section.