Christian Petzold is one of the directors who is a staple at the Berlinale, much like the Dardenne brothers and Wes Anderson are staples at Cannes.1It should be noted that Wes Anderson has premiered films at the Berlinale, including the ugly, overrated The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) and a stupid animated film in 2018. When his latest film, Miroirs No. 3, premiered at Cannes instead of the German festival, it was a surprise. Even more stunning was the fact that the film was relegated to a late-confirmed slot in the Quinzaine des Cinéastes section. That refers to the section that used to be the main reason for attending Cannes but, in the last three years, has deteriorated beyond recognition.
It is a fact that I have never written about Petzold on this page except when I ironically noted in 2023 that “there is no Berlinale without him.” I never wrote about the film he competed with that year, which, shockingly, won a significant award. The simple truth is that I’ve never regarded him as an important director. The little interest I had in him was swiftly wiped away by Carnival of Souls Yella (2007). A German critic who watched the film before me told me that it was a “minor Petzold”. I answered that it sounded alarming, considering that Petzold is a minor director to begin with.
Miroirs No. 3 by Maurice Ravel.
I’ve written only one masterpiece – Boléro. Unfortunately, there’s no music in it”.
Maurice Ravel.
The title of Petzold’s latest opus comes from a five-movement suite for solo piano composed by Maurice Ravel. Whatever you think of his oeuvre, the quote above at least demonstrates a certain self-awareness. When it comes to the film, the storyline centres on Laura (Paula Beer), a pianist who survives a car crash that conveniently claims the life of her boyfriend. She’s taken in by Betty (Barbara Auer), a woman who was painting a white picket fence right before the accident. The latter lives with her husband and son, who work at an auto repair shop. One of their regular tasks appears to be manipulating odometers.
I will not delve further into this ultra-light film, which I previously described as a 20-minute short stretched to 94 minutes. One critic claimed that it was shot in a few days. I haven’t been able to verify that, but it doesn’t seem like a lot of thought went into this production. On the other hand, Petzold re-shot the ending six months after the shoot wrapped. That is a possible reason why the film didn’t make it to this year’s Berlinale. As described in the faux pitch meeting above, it is a summer affair where not much is happening even beneath the surface. I was toying with the idea that Petzold was pulling another Carnival of Souls, but no.
If you still feel compelled to watch Miroirs No. 3, you might as well wait until the film becomes available on streaming platforms. You will lose virtually nothing of this almost provocatively lightweight work. The title of the third part in Ravel’s suite is Une barque sur l’ocean, and any boat on any ocean would have been much more compelling than this.
