Soon after the delicate, quietly revelatory “Miroirs No. 3” opens, a man and woman violently drive off a country road. He dies, but she lives and walks away into a new life. You don’t yet know these characters, but the accident is naturally unsettling, and the contrast between the pastoralism of the location and the violence of this all-too-familiar modern-age mishap is striking. Lovers of classic European art cinema may also find their gaze briefly fixed on the couple’s red convertible, which brings to mind the sporty cherry-colored number that plays a similarly deadly role in Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 film “Contempt.”
The woman in the accident, Laura (Paula Beer), a music student, had been on a trip with her boyfriend, Jakob (Philip Froissant), when he fatally crashed the convertible. The only other person in the area is Betty (Barbara Auer), an older woman who lives alone in a nearby cottage and hears the accident. After a quick look around, Betty carefully escorts Laura back to the cottage. There, the police take their statements, and a medic tends to Laura, who’s only suffered minor injuries. When Laura asks if she can stay with her, a surprised Betty agrees, an act of kindness that will intensely and movingly upend both their lives.
“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. Even two of the performers whom he’s often worked with look similar enough to be related: Beer and Nina Hoss, the star of his 2012 period drama “Barbara.” This doubling might have autobiographical meaning for Petzold, who was born in 1960 in what was called West Germany to parents who had immigrated from East Germany. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, Petzold was in film school, where he met other students who together became known as the Berlin School.
Petzold is a great admirer of “Vertigo,” Hitchcock’s 1958 tragedy about doomed love, a favorite cinéaste fetish in which a man (James Stewart) obsessively tries to transform a new acquaintance (Kim Novak) into a replica of his dead lover (also Novak). In 2003, when an interviewer asked Petzold about the relation between his film “Wolfsburg” and the Hitchcock, he said with a laugh, “Well, basically I always think of ‘Vertigo.’” Petzold has also said that he’s seen the Hitchcock a staggering 50 times, so it’s perhaps no surprise that it has continued to maintain a strong hold on him, including in “Miroirs.”
Betty’s cottage is a bright, airy refuge, and so too is her calm, attentively caring manner. She gives her light-flooded bedroom to Laura, who, after a long, deep sleep, wakes seemingly restored, much like a fairy-tale princess emerging from a spell. There’s been something overtly dreamy from the start of the movie, which opened in Berlin with Laura wordlessly standing before a river as if she were contemplating jumping. With her muted, near-somnolent affect, she appeared down, even depressed. Now, though, she seems newly and readily awake to life, much as people often are after surviving traumatic ordeals.
With calm, unhurried naturalistic scenes that never drift into languidness, the story tracks Laura over the course of her stay. Betty gives her some clothes, which fit perfectly. Betty also introduces Laura to her husband, Richard (Matthias Brandt), and their son, Max (Enno Trebs), gruffly taciturn mechanics who live and work nearby yet remain closely connected to Betty. Something unspoken hangs over these three like a haze, which lends their interactions — and the edgy looks they exchange — a frisson of mystery. The reasons for the unease remain unexplained for some time, even as the past presses in, shaping both the course of the story and feeding its low-key tension.
In time, Laura’s history and the family’s come into sharp view amid quotidian and oddly off-kilter moments. She helps around the house and cooks dumplings, a dish that she likes to make, and which turns out to be the favorite of Max and Richard. Both father and son continue to regard Laura with obvious wariness, but everyone gets along, which creates a sense of familial-like community. Laura’s presence even seems to have a salubrious effect on Betty and Richard’s relationship. And as they seem to grow closer, Laura and Max engage in some mild flirtation, which takes an abrupt turn when he blurts out that she isn’t his sister.
Laura isn’t, of course, yet the later revelation of what she is and what she means — to herself and to the family — shifts “Miroirs” into a new, emotionally deeper and plaintive register. Her time at Betty’s has outwardly restored her, 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 one of the compositions in Chopin’s Op. 28 preludes — 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.
Miroirs No. 3 Not rated. In German and French, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 26 minutes. In theaters.
Manohla Dargis is the chief film critic for The Times.
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