The path forward from trauma or pain, full of tricky psychological detours, has often been a haunting theme in the films of Christian Petzold. His latest, Miroirs No. 3, centers on two women, one still working through a shattering loss and the other stuck in an existential malaise that may be rooted in her unsatisfying relationship or in more intangible factors. When the two strangers land in an unlikely domestic arrangement together, it initially seems restorative for them both. But neat and tidy dramas about emotional healing are not the gifted German writer-director’s thing.

Like Petzold’s superb Chekhovian chamber piece, Afire, from 2023, the new film unfolds in a seemingly peaceful countryside setting disrupted by jagged tensions and unsettling changes, by connections and misconnections among people with very different needs.

Miroirs No. 3 is less layered and surprising than its immediate predecessor in the director’s filmography, its moment of revelation telegraphed too early to have much impact. But Petzold is invariably a probing observer of his characters’ psyches, aided here by four excellent actors, including the incandescent Paula Beer in their fourth collaboration.

Beer plays Laura, a piano student at a music academy in Berlin, first seen in the opening shots on an autobahn overpass looking down at a river. It’s unclear whether she is thinking about jumping, but her face is a map of quiet despair and isolation.

She seems jolted, almost aggressed, when she gets home late to find her boyfriend Jakob (Philip Froissant) in a state of annoyed agitation. When he says he’s been trying to call her she mutters that she lost her bag, but he is impatient, focused only on the friends, Roger (Marcel Heuperman) and Debbi (Victoire Laly), waiting downstairs for them to head out of town for the weekend.

Roger is a producer, and Jakob — presumably a filmmaker though that remains unspecified — has a lot riding on this weekend. Laura appears absent, barely listening to the conversation as they travel outside the city in Roger’s flashy, open-top sportscar. As soon as they reach their destination, she tells Jakob she doesn’t feel well and needs to go home. He seems barely able to contain his anger, but Roger tosses him the car keys and suggests he drive Laura to the train station. All three of them appear more put out than concerned that she is unwell.

Earlier, on the journey from Berlin, Laura’s attention is caught by a woman painting the fence outside her front yard, who returns her gaze with the same kind of troubled curiosity. A similar encounter happens on the way to the station when Jakob’s erratic driving almost runs the car off the road and hits her. Moments after they speed off, the woman hears a crash; she runs to the scene to find the vehicle flipped in a field and Jakob thrown from the car, dead.

The woman, whose name is Betty (Barbara Auer), takes Laura back to her home until the police and ambulance arrive. Aside from some scrapes and possibly a slight concussion, she is more dazed than injured. When the medic suggests she go to the hospital, Laura asks instead if she could stay at Betty’s while recovering. The older woman, who appears to live alone, seems taken aback only for a moment before showing Laura to the guest room of her house, which is comfortable but falling into disrepair.

Petzold lets us draw our own conclusions about why Laura, after experiencing a major shock, would choose to stay with a complete stranger and why Betty would welcome her, though clues to the latter’s reasons quickly add up. Even from the little we know of Laura, it sort of makes sense that she would be eager to disappear into another life.

In any case, Beer, who can seem at once guarded and emotionally transparent, handles Laura’s adjustment to the new environment with such naturalness and grace that we never question her motives. Betty gives Laura all the space she needs, leaving fresh clothes out for her, without explaining who previously owned them. Laura’s melancholia begins to lift as she finds pleasure in simple tasks like helping Betty finish painting the white picket fence or working in the garden.

Still, although she’s an unfailingly kind host, there’s something unsettling about Betty’s fascination with her guest, conveyed with subtlety by Auer. And what are the judgy looks from villagers passing on the road about? Betty doesn’t volunteer an explanation and Laura doesn’t ask.

As the two women get to know each other, it becomes clear Betty has had some kind of breakdown that alienated her husband Richard (Matthius Brandt) and mechanic son Max (Enno Trebs, so wonderful as the self-important novelist in Afire). The first Laura hears of them is when she offers to cook potato dumplings and Betty says they are Richard and Max’s favorite dish, deciding to invite them to dinner.

The arrival of the two men shifts the dynamic. They seem concerned that Betty is off her meds and rattled when they see a fourth place set for dinner. Only when Laura appears from the kitchen with the meal does its purpose become clear, but they act like they are seeing a ghost. Their silence comes off as rudeness, for which Betty rebukes them after dinner. She asks Max to repair a broken bicycle for Laura to use and she gets a piano tuner in to fix the neglected instrument in the living room corner.

When, during a subsequent visit from Richard and Max, Laura plays the shimmering Ravel piece that gives the movie its title, Betty is delighted while the men appear uneasy. Richard becomes somewhat accepting of Betty’s houseguest and glad to be spending time with his wife after a break. Max takes longer, but he eventually warms to Laura when she starts dropping by his auto-shop. Even so, something about her presence in his family home doesn’t sit right with him.

Well before this point, the cause — if not all the details — of the sadness lingering over the family will be obvious to most people watching, which makes it seem a stretch when Laura is taken by surprise, leaving her angry and humiliated. True, she has been floating around in a hazy alternate existence, putting her life on pause, but it seems implausible that she would see and hear the same clues we do and not piece the situation together.

In the hands of a lesser actor and director, Laura might have been a frustrating cipher. Fortunately, Beer illuminates the character’s inner life and the uncertainties swirling around her path forward, even as she retains her mystery. She berates herself early on for not skipping the weekend with the producer and thereby causing the fatal accident. Then later, she confesses to Max that she’s not sad about Jakob, adding that they were not even a proper couple.

The actress succeeds in bringing some psychological complexity to a script that otherwise has too little of it. All four principals add body to the rather slight drama, notably Auer (she appeared in Beer’s first film with the director, Transit, as well as his earlier feature, Yella), whose intensity rarely obscures Betty’s damage.

Using only diegetic music and shot in a crisp, unfussy style, with a preponderance of soft, natural light, the film is as spare and elegant as we have come to expect from Petzold. It’s a minor work for the director and its emotional heft feels softer than usual, but even his lesser films can be compelling, and Beer is never less than transfixing.