Miroirs No. 3

"Mirrors No. 3" is not a terrible film, however, it's one that was unnecessarily confusing and offered a very dissatisfying ending. As I left the theater, the other folks attending this film festival screening all seemed dissatisfied with the movie...saying things like "the ending was bad" to "I couldn't understand portions of it". I would have to agree.

A woman goes on an outing with her boyfriend and his friends. For no reason that is ever explained, she seems moody, disinterested and insists after they arrive at the outing that she goes home. However, on the way home, the boyfriend has an accident and is killed and Laura is barely hurt and was thrown clear of the car. For some odd reason, after the police and paramedics arrive, she insists she wants to stay with the woman who discoverd the accident...something that is never explained. Soon she and the lady are good friends and things seem just fine. Then, after the lady's grown son reveals a shocking truth (which was very predictable), he pushes her down. Her reaction is very strange.

This is a movie that felt like 20 minutes was randomly removed. Again and again, folks' behaviors were VERY hard to understand and the end just left me as baffled as the other theater-goers. It also featured a lot of acting where folks REALLY underacted! All in all, a film I did not enjoy...but really wanted to.

Petzold crafts an interesting story about identity and finding solace through it, but most of the runtime is spent on delivering painfully obvious revelations about its premise. And while I admire how he avoids going into genre extremes which could easily be imagined about a weird family harboring secrets, this leaves a void being left unfilled. We barely get to know the characters or their inner world, and everything we find out about them is deeply dull, most of their interactions are numb, just as if the movie is suffering from depression too. In the end, it all becomes a thin parable that would've easily fit into a 20-25 minute short.