A subtle and mysterious connection is made in the hypnotic ‘Miroirs No. 3’

You might be tempted, with every faraway look in Christian Petzold’s subtly moving “Miroirs No. 3,” to hope for that soothing, enlightened release so often served as catharsis in tales of loss and healing. But that would almost work against how gently stitched the intertwined strands are in this talented German director’s latest, no less meaningful for keeping some its feelings in check for as long as possible.

Petzold is no stranger to oblique storytelling, having crafted some of the most quietly thrilling psychological dramas of late, be they historical (“Barbara,” “Transit”) or interpersonal (“Afire”). With “Miroirs No. 3,” about an accident yielding an unusual recovery, the filmmaker is in a softer register of latent distress, but no less interested in thorny notions of hidden identity inside character studies of yearning.

We don’t know exactly what’s troubling the young woman (frequent Petzold star Paula Beer) at the beginning, standing over a railing on a stretch of elevated freeway, then walking to the edge of the water below. But we sense from her tattered sweater and blank stare a disconnection. Laura is next seen in the backseat of a red convertible with her boyfriend and another couple, headed on a trip, looking no less uncomfortable. She makes sudden eye contact with a middle-aged woman (Barbara Auer), whose house they pass on a rural stretch of road. Is it a plea? A curiosity? Who drew whose gaze?

When Laura insists on returning to Berlin, the impatient, irritated boyfriend reluctantly agrees to drive her back to the train station. But just past that woman’s house, going in the other direction, off camera, we hear a horrific crash. The woman, whose name is Betty, rushes to the scene. The boyfriend is dead and Betty helps Laura, relatively unharmed but dazed, back to her house. But a little later, Laura asks to stay with this good Samaritan rather than go with the EMTs, an arrangement that clearly pleases Betty. A shot/reverse shot of them simultaneously looking at each other through doorways — Laura inside, Betty outside — reinforces this odd moment of serene connection, as if each knows that ahead lies a journey into a new world.

You don’t need a degree in narrative cues (an untended garden, silences between pleasantries) to ascertain that this gracious, maternal host living in isolation sees a specific type of renewal in Laura, and vice versa for the detached, restless classical piano student. Laura’s willing absorption into Betty’s tranquil life of gardening and cooking is swift and pleasant — believably so thanks to the acute portrayals of Beer and Auer. But it initially unsettles Betty’s estranged husband Michael (Matthias Brandt) and grown son Max (a superb Enno Trebs), who operate a garage nearby. Their suspicious acceptance more readily hints at the painful reality underneath this modest fairy tale.

With its bicycle rides, family meals and general aura of awakening, “Miroirs No. 3” unfolds with cautious hope, if only because we know a reckoning is coming and what’s unsaid will have to be addressed. And yet Petzold’s gift for seasoning truth with elusiveness is fully in force, giving this airy yet ghost-charged rescue story a welcome intelligence to go with its unforced emotion. It ends with the quiet richness of the titular Ravel piece, a solo performed as an indirect communique of tension and release. Somewhat miraculously, we’re carried out of this consequential collision of hearts and minds on the lightest of notes, with the sense that our capacity to rediscover harmony will always be beautifully mysterious.

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