A young woman appears alone in the middle of a suspended landscape. She looks at the water, absent-mindedly, as if she had just arrived or were about to leave. We don’t quite know who she is or where she’s headed. In Miroirs No. 3, Christian Petzold once again embraces that cadence so particular to his work: the silent slippage of identities, the possibility of inhabiting another life for a fleeting moment, and the idea that something—perhaps love or grief—can emerge when we stop chasing it.
There is a story, of course. An accident at the beginning, a death, a gesture of hospitality. But Petzold is less interested in the drama that could be drawn from those elements than in the subtle tensions that arise between two women who, without intending to, begin to share something akin to intimacy. There are no explanations, no surprising twists. Only a persistent sense that things are not entirely clear, as if everything were unfolding underwater or behind slightly fogged glass.
The film rests on the intangible: an atmosphere of unreality barely interrupted by daily rituals—a walk at sunset, a meal shared, a borrowed garment that suddenly feels like one’s own. It’s easy to think of Éric Rohmer’s cinema, for that way of portraying connections built more through silences than words, and for that lightness that is never superficial. In Miroirs No. 3, transformation is neither stark nor obvious. It’s more of a drift. A woman settles into another woman’s house, sleeps in the bed of her absent daughter, eats the apples she finds in the kitchen, and gradually seems to slide into another existence, trying it on like a stranger’s winter coat. Is she an impostor? A guest? A ghost?
What’s interesting is that the film never rushes to define that bond. Nor does it turn ambiguity into a forced enigma. Instead, vagueness becomes its way of looking at the world. Relationships between characters are not explained—they are intuited. And that intuition is enough to sustain attention throughout the film’s brief runtime. Petzold chooses not to underline anything. Each scene unfolds with the lightness of a musical piece played by attentive fingers, without flourishes.
The title refers to both Ravel and reflection: not only the mirror’s, but the kind we sometimes recognize in someone we’ve just met. Like a game of doublings, some characters recall others who are no longer there, and in that resemblance, space opens for desire, affection, or solace. There is a very particular tenderness in that repetition—it’s not about replacing anyone, but about being permeated by the memory of what was lost. There is also humor, in small doses, and a gentle bewilderment that never turns threatening. The film glides, it slips away, it invites us not to fully understand. Its beauty lies in that surrender of control, in that way of trusting in the power of suggestion. The result is an intimate and melancholic experience, like leafing through the diary of someone we don’t know but whose writing, for some reason, feels familiar.
