Miroirs No. 3

★★★★
"German director Christian Petzold, the Chabrol of modern European cinema, delivers an elegant and disquieting psychological of mystery of the sort that doesn't interest today's British film-makers...
"It is a highly diverting, elegantly contrived study of an unhappy family group and the cuckoo in its nest.
Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian

★★★★★
"A sensational Paula Beer performance"
David Jenkins, Little White Lies

★★★★★
"Petzold is a master of mood, and the one he weaves here is intoxicating."
Chloe Walker, Culture Fly

★★★★
"One of the year's best soundtracks... Christian Petzold and Paula Beer reunite for their fourth feature together, and this strange, quiet character study is a perfect fit for what they do best: gentle mockery of the human heart, in all its oddities and contradictions.'
Carmen Paddock, The Skinny

"Beer's reserved performance gives Laura both intrigue and an internal life. It is the kind of acting that rarely wins awards precisely because it feels real rather than theatrical, no grand gestures, no visible working, just a woman you believe completely."
Kaleem Aftab, Time Out

"Excellence of the acting and craft contributions...
Unfussily, but elegantly shot in natural light and country colours."
David Parkinson, Parky at the Pictures

"What I love about Petzold's movies is that, although they're very much tethered to the real world, they're not afraid to embrace implausibility, coincidence and even hints of the supernatural. He has the head of a realist and the heart of a fantasist — or maybe it's the other way around.

Petzold also loves the conventions of classic Hollywood filmmaking and clearly believes they can speak powerfully to the audiences of today. In Miroirs No. 3, the notion of Laura serving as a stand-in for a deceased woman is clearly a riff on Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo, one of Petzold's favorite films. The protagonist's name also reminded me of one of my favorite films, the 1944 Otto Preminger classic Laura, which also has a memorable back-from-the-dead element.

But you don't have to spot these allusions to feel captivated and moved by the story that Petzold is telling. The surrogate-family bonds that Laura forms with Betty — and, in time, with Richard and Max — are undeniably therapeutic, and Petzold suggests there's something precious about these connections, even if they are built on a shared delusion. In showing us characters who feel the ache of love and loss, and who dream of a second chance, Petzold holds up a mirror to us all."

Justin Chang, Fresh Air

In the lovely new movie from the acclaimed German director Christian Petzold (“Barbara”), a woman wakes to life after an accident.“Miroirs” is the latest from the great German director Christian Petzold, who likes to fill his movies with doubles, a theme that’s expressed through bifurcated identities as well as dual (and dueling) relationships and situations.…Her time at Betty’s has outwardly restored Laura, enough so that she begins playing the piano in the cottage. Betty’s daughter also played piano, and it’s her clothes that Laura wears. Like the tormented male hero played by Stewart in “Vertigo,” Betty seems to be refashioning Laura in the image of another woman, though Petzold isn’t so much copying (mirroring) the Hitchcock movie here than offering an inspired variation on it.These cinematic allusions are catnip to film lovers, and while they’re pleasurable to consider they’re so delicately woven into the story that they never distract from the characters or the emotion, or edge into directorial cleverness. At this point, though, it is worth mentioning that Godard wanted Novak for the role played by Brigitte Bardot in “Contempt,” a little reminder of how men change and exchange women, onscreen and off. By contrast, in “Miroirs No. 3” — the title of a composition by Ravel — it is Betty and Laura who with gentleness and benevolence open themselves to each other and change their lives. Petzold likes to maintain a certain critical distance onscreen, but, oh, how beautifully he can move you to tears.

Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

★★★★★
‘Miraculously soothing...feels opulent in its caring and contains exactly the right amount of disquiet to keep the suspense of what it is we are actually watching.
Starring Paula Beer (Transit, Undine, Afire), opposite an equally excellent Barbara Auer, this ever so charmingly otherworldly tale takes us into a realm that can best be described as in-between.
More than in his previous films, Petzold here offers us a homecoming to a place we never knew and maybe always knew.  A peace in knowing you are allowed to be taken care of or, the other trajectory, allowed to take care of someone. It is the gentleness of fairy tales and its deep connection to our longings in times of crisis that is offered with Miroirs No. 3. An utterly extraordinary gift indeed.'
Anne-Katrin Titze, Eye For Film

'Deceptively haunting. Weeks later, memories of its images still greet me when I awake each morning.'
Sam Bodrojan, Reverse Shot

'Christian Petzold, one of Germany's most exciting contemporary filmmakers...
"Miroirs No. 3" feels positively Hitchcockian.. There's also something of the psychological tete-a-tete of Bergman's "Persona" here...
Clint Worthington, Rogerebert.com

'Beautifully mysterious...Petzold's gift for seasoning truth with elusiveness if fully in force, giving this airy yet ghost-charged rescue story a welcome intelligence to go with its unforced emotion.'
Robert Abele, Los Angeles Times

'A Masterful Film. Paula Beer is, as always, magnificent.'
Dustin Chang, Screen Anarchy

'Beguiling and brilliant.
The film is immaculately constructed.
One of the year's best films and a tale that will linger long after the credits roll.'
Sophia Ciminello, AwardsWatch

'An elegant demonstration of what can be achieved with limited ingredients in the hands of an inventive creative team and a first-rate cast. Although it’s a wisp of a thing, it delivers rich rewards. And while this enigmatic puzzle of a picture is not a comedy as such, there’s gentle humour to be glimpsed between the accumulated baggage of Betty and her family, and their new house guest.’
Wendy Ide, Screen

’Compelling....
Petzold is invariably a probing observer of his characters’ psyches, aided here by four excellent actors. The film is as spare and elegant as we have come to expect from Petzold... and Beer is never less than transfixing.’
David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter

‘Christian Petzold‘s gossamer latest film. 'Mirors No. 3,' is as compact as a novella, as ephemeral in its emotion, and as delicate in register as one of the Chopin or Ravel pieces that float through it.’
Ryan Lattanzio, IndieWire

‘No-one, absolutely no-one is doing it like Petzold. 
This is a work that is mellifluous, melodious and mysterious in equal measure. As usual, Petzold draws in a number of artistic inspirations and touchpoints, then riffs around them without ever erring into anything as déclassé as homage. A Sphinx-like Beer, once again, seems to connect with her director on a level which transcends the purely professional, and through her economic yet forceful use of body language and expression, she makes certain that the film adheres perfectly to Petzold’s immaculate calculations.
Christian Petzold delivers once again with this deviously structured psychodrama.'
David Jenkins,Little White Lies

'Gorgeous, drifting study of a woman taken in by a stranger after a car crash has faint echos of Vertigo, but is more concerned with unnerving family dynamics than romance. Suspense melts away into golden summer days in Christian Petzold’s low-key psychodrama. There are clues and there is a reveal, but more importantly, Petzold tries out an algebra of relationships that is new for him, namely that ‘3+1=2+2’ and that a single look of recognition has the power to save a life.’
Savina Petkova, Sight & Sound

‘An Elegant Sliver of a Psychodrama. 
A humid little psychological drama of displacement, replacement and fresh plum cake, in which balmy days mix with unhealed trauma to briefly make precarious new lives and identities possible. This 86-minute puzzle piece is distinguished by his trademark pleasures of texture and tone — and pushes his ongoing collaboration with star Paula Beer into ever more enigmatic territory.’
Guy Lodge, Variety

‘A quietly haunting domestic drama that remains cloistered in its pastoral setting. Petzold has crafted yet another sneakily trenchant commentary on How We Live Now.’
Brad Hanford, Slant magazine