Second Family
Schramm Film
MOVIE REVIEW
Mirrors No. 3 (2025)
Christian Petzold continues the exploration of his favorite theme – doubles – with “Mirrors No. 3.” Named after a Maurice Ravel composition, the film is apparently a modern Brothers Grimm fairytale per the German auteur during a post-screening Q&A at the film’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight world premiere. He’s surprisingly frazzled in person, polar opposite of the clinical precision his work projects. This is a story about doppelgängers, but with a twist.
Laura (Paula Beer) is riding along to the countryside with her boyfriend, Jacob (Philip Froissant), when their car passes by Betty (Barbara Auer), who reacts as if she has just seen a ghost. After arriving at their destination, Laura suddenly wants to turn around head back to Berlin. On the way to the train station for Laura’s return trip, their car flips over and Jacob is killed instantly. Betty rushes to the scene and takes Laura in. When the paramedics inform her that Laura wishes to stay with her rather than go to the hospital, Betty is more than delighted.
Betty has a Freudian slip and calls her guest Yelena. At this point it’s pretty clear to the audience what’s happening, but Laura has yet to catch on. Soon Betty summons her husband, Richard (Matthias Brandt), and son, Max (Enno Trebs), over for dinner. When the men are just about to lay into Betty for setting an extra plate, Laura emerges from behind the kitchen door with Richard and Max’s favorite Koenigsberg dumplings and leaves them utterly speechless.
While the family’s acceptance of the stranger is completely understandable, it’s unclear what Laura herself gets out of this arrangement, especially when she seems so unbothered by Jacob’s demise. She quickly ingratiates herself into the family, blissfully clueless about noisy neighbors’ stares. Her presence apparently also helps return Richard and Max, who have seemingly been living separately, to the fold.
The movie gets real deep. Mr. Petzold explained in the Q&A that Laura’s time with this figurative adoptive family is meant to unfold like a sped-up version of a child’s life from birth to leaving the nest. In other words, Laura is Yelena reincarnated within the context of this family.
You get a sense that it’s a matter of time before this charade will come to an end, or else would there even be a movie? Though Max gets along with Laura initially, he eventually comes to his senses even if he doesn’t question whether she has any ulterior motives. This family of convenience is not dysfunctional, though its members recognize it’s unhealthy – but is it really? Perhaps it’s a heaven-sent opportunity for them to heal and move on, and they don’t even realize it.
Mr. Petzold has been known for political allegories, but it’s truly exciting to see him applying his sensibility to a family drama. Though it is yet another ghost story, it’s told with an abundance of heart and humor, reminiscent of “Misericordia” in its exploration of grief and the human need for connection, but without the sarcasm.
The cast is uniformly strong, with Ms. Beer convincingly passing off as a character who registers as much younger. As mentioned earlier, there are some inexplicable plot holes that may come across as lazy mistakes in lesser films. But “Mirrors No. 3” is profound, and as satisfying as a fairytale can be for adults.
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