Cinema Releases - 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 excellent at letting the gentle rapport between Laura and Betty live alongside...
"Watching Miroirs No. 3 evokes the feeling of of reading an excellent short story:though it may be over quickly, it lingers in you head for quite some time afterwards.
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 compositions 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