I’m not sure why I feel slightly disappointed with this solid and gentle drama from Christian Petzold.

I think it’s probably because I think of him as the director of Transit, where we are watching a similarly well-characterised and emotional story but there is an underlying subtext that really makes you reflect on our place in contemporary history. I kept expecting something similar from this one, particularly as the synopsis mentions it as a kind of ghost story. I wondered if we would find that we were watching things that were different to what they seemed.

The start is interestingly jagged and slightly contrived. We see a woman, who we later to find out is Laura (Paula Beer), who is out of sorts. Potentially depressed, her creep of a boyfriend seems oblivious and pushes her into coming on a trip into the countryside. When she asserts herself, an accident happens that leaves her injured and being cared for by a woman living alone in a nearby house.

This woman Betty (Barbara Auer), seems at first a bit shaken but then is happy to let Laura stay in her house for a few days, providing her with food and comfort and tasks to keep her occupied. There are some hints early on that Betty has suffered a loss, and we suspect it is of a daughter of a similar age to Laura. Into the picture comes Betty‘s husband and son, obviously two people who have real concerns about her mental well-being.

What plays out is a rather gentle and lovely story of people coming to terms with grief, with taking time out to feel okay about themselves. It didn’t have the subtext I was expecting, the things you think are happening are happening, and they are handled with a certain amount of empathy and delicacy.

It ends in a way that is a little bit hopeful, making you ponder on the role we have in each other’s lives when things are tough. How we think we are alone but then find there are others like ourselves.

I think the title is a play on words – a bit of searching after a suggestion by my MIFF buddy Ariel showed that Ravel wrote a series of pieces called Mirrors and I suspect that the piano music we are hearing is Mirrors Number 3. And of course we get a hint about reflections and how we separate reality from imitation.