“Petzold’s lightest and most accessible film to date.”

Perspectives shift repeatedly in Christian Petzold’s latest, Mirrors No. 3 (after a Ravel piano piece that plays a key role in the film). The impression of characters changes from objective to subjective as scenes move around, or at times even within scenes. Laura, the protagonist, the mysterious woman with misery in her eyes, observes the family that has taken her in without question; they seem to have their own misery. The family, on the other hand – mother, father, and son – regard Laura from a subjective point of view for reasons made apparent in fragments. A breezy drama that shows Petzold funnier than he has ever been before, underneath it hides a lot of trauma and grief, not all of which will be revealed, and not all of which will be dealt with in a healthy way. But as the credits roll to the upbeat sounds of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons’ ‘The Night’, everybody seems to be in a better place, and Paula Beer’s last enigmatic, mesmerizing smile lingers. Who wouldn’t take her in?

One wouldn’t say that of the woman at the beginning of the film though, as there are no smiles in Laura’s life. Her oblivious (and frankly, obnoxious) boyfriend Jakob (Philip Froissant) talks her into a weekend away from Berlin with a befriended couple. As their little red corvette, one of those cars you only see in films, swiftly moves through the countryside, Laura isn’t quite there. Clearly suffering from depression, she stares into the distance while the others discuss the songs playing on the radio, the only thing catching her eye a woman beside the road. This eye contact will repeat itself on the way home, when Jakob drives a despondent Laura back to the train station after she makes it known she doesn’t want to be there. A few moments later the car is on its side in the field, Jakob dead beside it. Laura, flung out of the car during an accident we only hear, miraculously survives with barely a scratch. The woman beside the road, Betty (Barbara Auer), takes her home, and as the paramedics conclude that Laura is more or less fine, the mysterious Betty says she wants her to stay at her house for a while.

This comes as a bit of a shock to Richard (Matthias Brandt) and Max (Enno Trebs), father and son respectively. Mechanics with the ability to fix anything, they suddenly find themselves with a wife and mother with a newfound confidence, and a young woman who slides into familiarity around the house and around them. In their idyllic, almost fairytale-like home with its lovely garden and the soothing sounds of nature always around, Laura gradually gets her smiles and her confidence back. What’s in it for her is clear: a time of peace away from whatever stress caused her to be in a rut earlier. Was it her failing relationship with Jakob perhaps? “I should be sad, but I’m not,” she says when asked how she feels about his death. It’s not the first time in one of Petzold’s films that a character disassociates from trauma to survive. But what is in it for the family? Betty completely reforms Laura, clothing her, explaining their herb garden to her, making Max fix a bicycle for her. But in whose image?

It’s the image of a lost girl, Yelena, daughter of the family who committed suicide. To Betty, it is as if her girl is back with Laura around. Petzold doesn’t reveal this in one dramatic moment, preferring to leave enough hints for the audience to tie everything together. This is why Max, sensing a romantic development between the two of them, becomes so reluctant to be alone with Laura. Once he lays the family’s secret out in the open, shock and anger force Laura back to Berlin, where she picks up her piano studies at the conservatory. But as that final smile reveals, while she hasn’t become Yelena, she is back to being Laura at her fullest.

Paula Beer once again proves herself to be one of the most enigmatic actresses around, who especially flourishes in Petzold’s odd and often somewhat cold tales. In their fourth collaboration the enigma is still there, not only in Laura as a character but in Beer’s performance as well, a look or a smile never fully telling a story, always keeping something hidden. We don’t really get to know Laura, only her version of Yelena. And while the premise is a dark fable about grief and dealing with loss in unorthodox ways, Petzold’s coldness is replaced by a wonderful situational sense of humor: especially the hapless men in the family are the victims, the way the two women boss them around to finally fix things around the house eliciting a healthy dose of laughter. Shooting through its barely 90-minute runtime at a brisk pace, and while he still infuses his stories with odd, slightly off characters, Mirrors No. 3 is Petzold’s lightest and most accessible film to date, and a viable commercial proposition for the arthouse circuit.