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Three Women was another Robert Altman masterpiece. His films have always deeply explored the frailties, of the human personality. And Three Women is typical of Altman's deftness, regarding intense characterizations.

This film takes place in the late 70s, in a remote California town. It revolves around three very different female characters, and the effects that each of them has on each other's lives.

Shelley Duvall is cast as Millie. Millie is an intensely garrulous woman. She's obsessed with talking about recipes, that she garners from women's magazines. She annoys those around her, with her constant chatter about her 'latest recipe'.

Millie also desperately wants to impress her male acquaintances. Men seem to mostly shun Millie though, which doesn't stop her from trying to gain their attention.

Millie has a dead-end job, working as a nurse's aid in a nursing home. Her supervisors are brusque, and unsympathetic. She tries to be friendly and helpful, but this often causes her more problems with her bosses.

Pinky (played by the very talented Sissy Spacek) moves to Millie's town. She needs a job and is hired as a nurse's aid, at the same nursing home that Millie works at. Millie is assigned to train Pinky in her new job duties. Pinky soon becomes quite attached to Millie.

Finally, Millie has someone around (Pinky), who actually admires her. When Millie posts a notice on the bulletin board at work , indicating that she seeks a roommate, Pinky is only to happy to get the chance to room with Millie. Pinky then moves into Millie's apartment. Though Millie's apartment has a tacky, garish quality, Pinky expresses how sublime she thinks it is.

One afternoon after work, Millie asks Pinky to go with her to a run-down bar. Pinky meets Millie's friend Edgar, who has set-up a shooting rink out back. He constantly practices shooting there, and invites Millie and Pinky to participate. Edgar is a sophomoric, macho-type, who drinks heavily. He also likes to show-off his marksmanship skills.

Millie also introduces Pinky to Willie, who happens to be Edgar's artist girlfriend. Willie is always painting monstrous, sexually explicit creatures around the bar. Pinky is, inexplicably, mesmerized by Willie's offbeat paintings.

Willie has a haunting, remote presence. She mostly watches everyone else from afar, while being intensely involved with her artwork. Willie also happens to live in the same apartment building, as Millie and Pinky. Her disturbing paintings, adorn the bottom of the swimming pool located there.

Basically, the film doesn't have much of a plot. At least not in the traditional, linear manner that audiences are accustomed to. Instead, Altman chose to focus on the psychological aspects of the relationship between the three woman, and how this changes over time.

The friendship between Pinky and Millie becomes tumultuous, for no obvious reason. Willie is the ethereal, mysterious woman of the three. She doesn't interact much with Millie and Pinky throughout the film. Willie's artwork is so hypnotic to Pinky though, that it has a horrible effect on Pinky's psyche, resulting in tragic consequences. The viewer is left to try and fathom why.

All three women in the film, are social misfits. And they each struggle pathetically to function in the alienating, urban environment that they inhabit. Altman did a marvelous job, highlighting the emotional turmoil that the women inflict on each other, during the course of the film.

This is a film that will leave a deep impression, regarding the dynamics of women's friendships in modern life. But don't expect a neat and tidy conclusion, to the conflicts between the three women. More than any film I've ever seen, this one is vastly open to viewer interpretation.

Put together a top-shelf Raymond Carver story and the last two reels of 2001 and you have a dim idea of the unique genius of Altman's 1977 masterpiece, probably the most original movie ever made within the studio system. Shelley Duvall is a practiced flirt and would-be social butterfly, oblivious to the total failure of her Donna Reed mystique, and Sissy Spacek is the childlike tag-along who idolizes her. That's all I'll say about the story, which makes turns you couldn't have guessed at in ways that can't be summarized. Humane, funny, staggeringly strange and deeply creepy, THREE WOMEN defines certain social strata and modes of interaction that you've never seen in a movie before or since--and then goes out on a mystical limb that makes the last third of APOCALYPSE NOW look prosaic. With all due respect to NASHVILLE, MCCABE and many others, Altman never made a better film.

I've wanted to see Robert Altman's "3 Women"(1977) for long time and finally saw it last night. The references to one of my all time favorites, Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" are obvious: two young women, the main characters (seemingly meek, childlike Pinky and outgoing and seemingly popular but in reality a sad loser Millie seem almost to exchange identities, or to become one in a desperate search for connection and sense of belonging but "3 Women" is memorable and haunting on its own terms. It makes you think long time after it's over. As a matter of fact, I am still thinking about it. I think that it is an incredible work of an extraordinary master. As always in his best films, Robert Altman is terrific - innovative, iconoclastic, free-spirited, unconventional, and truly original. He is a great humanist who sees through his characters but never makes fun of them and he understands them. Under his directing, Shelly Duvall and Sissy Spacec gave two astonishing performances. They were both great but Duvall was a revelation. She adapted the loquacious Millie's personality and become the character. Altman had discovered Duvall at one of the malls in Texas where she was selling cosmetics and given her roles in his six films. I want also to mention the eerie music, the dreamy and uneasy atmosphere of something sinister ready to happen, the scary and mesmerizing murals on the bottom of the pool that the third woman, silent and mysterious, tired and wise Willie (Janice Rule) was painting. Altman did not try to trick or confuse me, and the story seems to be simple one but I am not sure that I understood everything, especially the enigmatic ending. Altman was aware of the effect of his movie to the viewers and in his commentary he says that he sees the film as a painting and that the audience should feel it but not understand it. In this regard it also reminds of "Un chien andalou" (1929) which was supposed to be experienced directly and not analyzed by the viewers.

"3 Women" is another great film by one of the best American film directors. I've never seen a bad film from Robert Altman.

9/10

Altman made a lot of films that are obscure and deserve to remain so ("Quintet"), but he also made a lot of films that are obscure but deserve to be seen, and "3 Women" is one of those. It's one of the most fascinating films Altman created, and that's really saying something from a director who was able to make even his bad films fascinating.

Altman claimed that "3 Women" was inspired by a dream he had while his wife was lying ill in a hospital, and the film does indeed work on its audience the way a dream does. It resists literal interpretation, and will probably frustrate any viewer who insists upon tidiness in their movies. It communicates its messages instead through pervasive imagery and tone -- it's not "about" something as much as it's about making you FEEL something, and it does that expertly. This movie will stick in your mind and haunt you long after you've seen it.

If I were forced to explain the film's plot, it would go something like this: Shelley Duvall plays Millie, a rather foolish woman who works in a geriatric physical therapy center, and whose roommate has just moved out to live with her boyfriend. Sissy Spacek plays Pinkie, newly hired at the center and put under Millie's direction. Millie is a pathetic character -- she yammers on endlessly about ridiculously trivial things (like how to make tuna melts) and doesn't realize that everyone around her either ignores her or makes fun of her. But Pinkie nevertheless becomes enamored of her and moves in with her. The third woman of the title is Willie, a reclusive artist who owns both the apartment complex in which Millie and Pinkie live, and a saloon that resembles something from a ghost town. She paints murals of strange-looking mythological creatures engaged in violent and sexual acts. These images recur throughout the film, as do images of water. Everything up to this point in the movie is dealt with in a fairly straightforward manner. But then Pinkie has an accident, and when she wakes up, she's become a different person, causing Millie's hold on reality, already tenuous, to unravel. At this point, the film becomes reminiscent of films like "Persona" and "Mulholland Drive," in which seemingly separate female characters merge into different facets of one female personality.

The ending is creepy and chilling in ways that are hard to define. The whole film has violent undertones -- the lone male character in the film is a lout and vaguely predatory; all of the women at various moments seem to be holding back a barely suppressed rage. Altman uses his camera in his characteristically expert manner to shape our perceptions about what we are seeing, and he uses other parts of his mise-en-scene, like color (Millie's favorite colors are yellow and purple, and look for them in the art direction), to bring a slightly surreal quality to even the most mundane of locations.

I've always thought that Shelley Duvall was an underrated actress, and she gives one of her best performances as Millie (and almost looks pretty for a change). Sissy Spacek is tremendous as well, and shows a remarkable range as Pinkie. Both of these actresses do wonderful things with tough roles, and even if we sometimes feel like we're on uneven footing because of the movie's enigmatic nature, the actresses are so assured in their parts that we can rely on them to guide us through it.

Altman directed a quartet of "dream" films that all revolve around the psychological and emotional crises of women: "That Cold Day in the Park" (1969); "Images" (1972); "Come Back to the 5 & Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean" (1982); and "3 Women." I've not seen "That Cold Day..", but of the other three, though all of them have qualities to recommend them, "3 Women" is easily the best.

Grade: A

3 Women is a seriously strange mood study that plays like a languid nightmare. It is an abstract and unusual film, loaded with symbolism. The logic, if there is any, is dream logic. Everything is open to interpretation. There is no sense to be made of it so don't even try.

The first half of the film is slow and aimless but things get very interesting once Pinky (brilliantly acted by Sissy Spacek) hits her head. Pinky sort of becomes Millie (Shelley Duvall) and Millie sort of becomes Pinky and they both sort of become the dream of Willie (Janice Rule) or maybe they don't. Listening to director Robert Altman's commentary on the DVD is revealing. He says that he sees the film as a painting and that the audience should feel it but not understand it.

The references to Persona are obvious but while watching 3 Women I was reminded of another haunting and puzzling film- Picnic at Hanging Rock.

Mysterious and deeply Freudian, 3 Women is one truly unique work so sit back and marvel at the inexplicable.