Stuck in the rut of overwhelming loss, anything can feel like a sign. In the case of Betty (Barbara Auer) witnessing a horrific car accident turns out to be a gift from Heaven. Nearly getting run over by the vehicle herself mere moments earlier, her eye catches that of Laura (Paula Beers), a depressed music student in the passenger seat. She barely even acknowledges Laura’s boyfriend Jakob (Philip Froissant) in the driver’s seat, who feels foolish having nearly sailed his car through her front yard on a serpentine drive. As he corrects his direction in frustration and drives off again, Betty can’t let the image of Laura go. Seeing her was like seeing a ghost. Seconds later, the car crashes in the ditch. Jakob is dead but Laura survives, requesting Betty’s sudden care and hospitality. As though Laura was meant to arrive at her home, as though she willed the situation into existence, Betty could not be more thankful.

Christian Petzold’s newest film Miroirs No. 3 (named after Maurice Ravel’s piano suite) is a beguiling and intimate work, focused once again on his core themes of lonely people. Here, Laura is one who couldn’t quite find the satisfaction with Jakob, nor the small group of friends that surrounded them, that she needed to live a happy life. Neither of them were bad people, perhaps occasionally insensitive, feeling at least an ounce of concern when she began to shy away from their weekend activities. Laura just didn’t “fit” with them. Her loneliness, in general, feels like a curse, not quite making sense to anyone around her. Finding comfort in Betty’s home with Betty as a somewhat-surrogate mother, she feels more at home on vacation than she’s ever felt before.

Betty gives her spare clothes, offers her a room, and allows Laura to take full advantage of their home piano, reciprocating all of that tenderness back, treating Laura as a member of the family. She even invites her slightly-estranged husband Richard (Matthias Brandt) and son Max (Enno Trebs) over for a dinner that she and Laura prepare together. She intends they continue to gather together like one happy family. While Laura is just grateful for Betty’s care, Richard and Max sense immediately what Betty is doing and why she feels so intent on having Laura stay with her. But the longer Laura stays, the more they side with Betty’s unspoken intentions and find peace in coming back together.

What begins as a peculiar start, filled with lingering oddity from the jump, Miroirs No. 3 blossoms into a deeply complex look at chosen family and the morality of how we feel the empty holes in our life that the universe cruelly leaves for us. How we choose to therapize the emotional wounds with grand illusions of contentment and emotional closure without the acceptance of a more harsh reality and the inability to accept real loss. But as long as it’s mutually beneficial, then it’s okay, right? For Laura, she isn’t completely oblivious to Betty’s overt sincerity, but even without knowing Betty’s full truth, what she gains out her new situation begins to feel like actual serenity. The neighbors may look at this new unit of four with strangeness, aware of the real elephant in the room, but Betty and her family ignore it.

Paula Beers plays Laura with such open-hearted longing, letting her eyes more than words communicate the most to the audience. Her vision of a perfect life surrounding her with every new morning, though not quite on the same page as the family that takes her in. Barbara Auer is properly nurturing, reeling us in to her motherly kindness from her introduction, all while letting fragile layers of unfilled, emotional greed peel back the longer Laura stays under her roof.

As someone who is familiar with Petzold’s work in name-only, it is intriguing to see what his fans and critics consider to be a “lesser or minor” work from him. It is of my own fault for not catching up on his films sooner, but what he is able to mine from the endless amount of stories about familial loss and bereavement sparks a fascinating conversation to be had. Enough to feel intent on digging in further. As for Miroirs No. 3 on its own terms, it does feel small (it is a brisk 86 minutes), but its aloof nature keeps you intrigued at all times, finding so much to say in just the way the characters look at each other. Each trying to fill a bottomless void, to replace what should and may inevitably be irreplaceable anyway.