Christian Petzold’s new film is named after a music piece, “Miroirs No. 3” by Maurice Ravel. The piece is played by Paula Beer’s character Laura in the film, but the actual musical leitmotif in this film is different, namely the northern soul dance floor banger “The Night“ by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (1972). The song is played three times, just one of the three mirrorings in this film. Frankie Vallis “The Night” is a song with chasms. It begins with a brutal bass line, which, after the first run-through, is underpinned by a weeping Hammond organ and a tambourine backbeat, before the irresistible groove sets in with a powerful snare hit, and Frankie whispers softly:

“Beware … of his promise, believe what I say“,then the Four Seasons start to play harmonies, and Frankie threatens to go an octave higher: “Before I go forever, be sure of what you say.“

On the surface, “The Night“ is a simple song. A man speaks to his love who has found a new lover. His most important argument is that the promises of new love can dissolve all too quickly. Under this simple construction, metaphors and a hysteria on the edge of madness are brewing.

„And he always keeps you dreamin'
If he always keeps you dreamin'
You won't have a lonely hour”

What does that mean, and why is the line about the dream repeated? If the lover perpetuates a dream, a wish, that means that the wish will never be fulfilled. Permanent desire instead of wish fulfillment. Gilles Deleuze would’ve liked that, masochists and surfers perhaps too, but it is a fragile, dangerous structure of desire.

Petzold’s film begins with a possible suicide attempt. Laura (Paula Beer) is on a highway bridge. She wears a depressing lilac cotton sweater that is frayed, has holes, and runs. She looks devastated and looks out on the Spree under the bridge. In the next image, she is under the bridge and looks on sadly at the river again. How did she get there? What happened between those images? Was the bridge not high enough? Is Laura already her own ghost who sees herself falling? A SUP paddler pulls her out of this reverie.

Laura comes home. The curtains blow in the room as if someone had jumped from the window. Her boyfriend comes out of the kitchen, he is mad because she is late. Laura drives to the outskirts of the countryside in a convertible with her stupid boyfriend, his stupid producer, a show-off, and his stupid girlfriend (“What’s wrong with her?”). Laura is in a bad mood and wants to go home. Her boyfriend is meant to drive her to the station. They get into an accident and the stupid boyfriend is dead. After the bridge and the river, the third bifurcation, a branching off, where Laura might have died, but the path continues.

After the three near-deaths, a woman who had already seen Laura twice before standing by the roadside in a black dress like an angel of death, finds the injured woman on the side of the road. The woman, Betty (Barbara Auer), seemingly becomes her savior. Laura survives and is almost unharmed. She prefers staying with Betty over going home. Betty seems very happy, and for a few days a utopic Brandenburg idyll arises with beer and Königsberg dumplings, one of those strange in-between phases that are always present in Petzold’s films. From the start, discordant notes creep in, not only in the atmosphere between the characters, but also in the film, which, as always with Petzold, is so carefully composed. Laura is quite affectionate towards Betty, and later also towards her husband Richard (Matthias Brandt) and their son Max (Enno Trebs). They all love each other, but Laura strangely doesn’t wonder why there’s young women’s clothes in the house, or who used to live in her room. There is a (pretty open) secret, but it seems as though Laura doesn’t want to know, she also doesn’t want to know why Richard and Max don’t live in the house or why they’re so worried about Betty.

Petzold’s film revolves around a mystery that is barely a mystery at all. As a psychological drama, MIROIRS NO. 3 only partially works, because it’s only a partial mystery. MIROIRS NO. 3 is a story about Betty and Laura’s ghosts that don’t directly appear, only in reflections. Christian Petzold’s films are often constructed out of different elements like a Rubik’s cube which shift against each other as if in experimental arrangements, which is why his figures sometimes do not seem entirely alive. In MIROIRS, at least, there’s hope that they could be more lively.

Tom Dorow (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy