Miroirs no. 3

After surviving a violent car crash that kills her boyfriend, Laura is immediately taken in by Betty, a mysterious middle-aged woman who lives alone in an isolated house in the countryside. Strangers to one another, the two women build a quiet, respectful life together, though the reemergence of Betty’s estranged husband and son sheds light on the tragic past that explains the murky present. The pleasurable enigma of Miroirs No. 3, named for a Ravel piano suite, returns Petzold to the metaphysical ambiguity of earlier films like Yella (2007) and the themes of doubling in his cherished Phoenix (2014), yet with a distinctive ethereality all its own.