User Reviews

Three Women is an utterly fascinating film, and, by my calculations, is Altman's second best after Nashville, which few films can beat. However, whereas I am so familiar with Nashville that I am actually arrogant enough to believe I can understand it, Three Women does not inspire that sort of confidence in me. I have no clue what exactly it is about.

Basically, it is one of those movies where a woman, Pinky, admires her roommate Millie so much that she wishes to emulate her in every way, apparently even trying to steal her identity. In doing so, she freaks her roommate out, as can certainly be expected. She also freaks the audience out. It isn't all just a bunch of shivering, though. This movie contains a lot of humor which can only be called 'Altmanesque.' The great irony is that Pinky's object of admire is nothing but a bag of hot air. Millie is such a loser. At the film's opening, she is training Pinky for her new job at the nursing home. To any normal person, two weeks into the job, you'd be amazed at how much a moron the person is who showed you the ropes. She brags about men whom she rejects, but all the hot dates she claims to be going on never come to fruition. Millie also overreacts to Pinky's actions, yelling at her for very petty transgressions. When Millie does something that is grossly irresponsible and morally wrong, she attacks Pinky for judging those actions. Meanwhile, Pinky is creepily reciting passages from Millie's diary with the passion of a high school drama student.

Taking Ingmar Bergman's Persona as its major inspiration, around halfway through the film, after Pinky has an accident and goes into a coma, the two women begin to switch roles. Millie becomes the passive and protective roommate while Pinky becomes the aggressive vixen. Actually, Pinky becomes the mythic version of Millie.

But I have purposely left out the third woman of the title. I really am not sure about her, or the climax and the ending, in which she plays a major part. Her name is Willie, a pregnant woman married to a man named Edgar (who will, through the course of the film, also sleep with both Millie and Pinky). They run a bar where Millie likes to hang out, and they also live in the same apartment complex as Millie and Pinky. Edgar is an outgoing joker, and has no problem sleeping around on his wife. Willie is mostly silent, which is why she is easy to forget in the proceedings. She paints in a Native American style all over the bar and the apartment complex. She does so seemingly because she is compelled to. She despises complements about them. Throughout the film, her paintings comment on the situation between Millie and Pinky (they're used in a masterful fashion, but the pan-and-scan version that I saw on TV (it was also edited for time and content, dag nabbit) screws this up a bit). I don't know if she serves much more of a purpose than that for most of the film.

It is the ending which is especially peculiar, and it also most effectively channels Persona. Pinky has convinced Millie that she ought to have their apartment's master bedroom to herself (and Millie ought to sleep in the living room). Pinky has a surreal dream, which is punctuated by the camera's filming through a fish tank whose blue waters are undulating like a snake, in which she goes through the events of the past few months. She becomes frightened, and, much as Elisabeth Volger does in Persona, she wanders into Millie's bedroom. Here, though, she wakes Millie up, asking if she would mind sharing a bed tonight. As they try to sleep, Edgar wanders into their apartment, drunk off his rocker and spouting that Willie is giving birth all alone. Millie and Pinky race to her side. Millie tells Pinky to drive away and fetch a doctor, while she herself helps Willie deliver the child. Pinky, fascinated or frightened (she had earlier expressed fear about being pregnant herself), just stands there and stares. When the child is born, it is still. Willie cries in her bed, and Millie smacks Pinky for not getting a doctor.

The next scene takes place at a restaurant where Pinky is apparently a waitress. She bizarrely refers to Millie as her mother. We find out that Edgar accidentally killed himself with his gun, but the audience suspects differently (all three women had individual scenes where they shot at targets at the bar; they also all have reason to despise him). Millie and Pinky then leave the restaurant and walk back to their house, where Willie sits on a porch swing. Pinky talks to her as if they were sisters. They appear to be living together as a family.

Who else could end a film like that besides Altman? I've only lately come to notice this, but his endings are always enormously original. I just lately saw his latest film, Dr. T and the Women, which many people hated because of the ending. I cringe imagining what they would do with this one. If anyone has any ideas, please contact me. I will have to watch it again. Perhaps soon they will release it on DVD where I can watch it in its true form. 10/10.

. . . which is a really good thing in this case.

If you've seen other Altman films, you know that he uses a very spontaneous, documentary style that glances here and there, picking up little bits of dialog and character. He lets the story, whatever it is, evolve naturally and doesn't force it.

In this film, things work a little differently. There is a fairly tight, classical story, sort of, even though a couple of big pieces are missing. Moreover, there is a very strong sense of symbolism in almost every shot, from Shelley Duval's first appearance, where she is pictured as a "new woman" displacing an older generation, to the scene where Sissy Spacek playfully puts a noose around her neck, foreshadowing her suicide attempt.

But here's the miracle: even though there's a lot of symbolism, the style still feels very loose and spontaneous and open, just like other Altman films. How this is possible, I don't know, but it's quite an accomplishment--almost unique in cinema, I think, in the way that each frame is simultaneously closed & symbolic but also open & realistic. Really, you have to see it to believe it.

Best of all, the story, which concerns three very different women, is perfectly suited to the style. This is a fable about the way women's identities are changing (or not) and it asks the right questions without giving clear answers.

Actingwise, the real treat here is Shelley Duval as the "new woman," the Cosmo girl, plastic and fake and shallow and miserable and somehow, at the same time, horribly and hilariously alive. You will not forget her, or the double-sided, real/symbolic world she moves in.

The first half of the movie is like a quirky character study. This part was intriguing, if strange and cringe-inducing. Millie is a woman who thinks she's in the center of life, but in reality is far from it. In scene after scene she is ignored, or made fun of behind her back. A naive Pinky (whose real name is also Mildred, while Millie is short for Mildred), comes into her life first as workmates, then roommates. Probably due to her limited experience she thinks Millie is just wonderful, while Millie sees her as first a convenience, then a nuisance.

Then, the movie turns into the Twilight Zone. Here's where it all falls apart. After a vulgar browbeating by Millie, Pinky attempts suicide and, possibly due to brain damage from the attempt, changes personality and has problems remembering her past. The new personality is what Millie thinks she is, but this time it's real. A brash, confident, and actually nasty, self-obsessed person-and very popular. In a dream, remnants of Pinky's memory come back to her, and she starts to revert to her former self, or some amalgam of the two personalities. The final scene makes it seem as if the entire episode might have been the dream of the third woman, Willie (get it, the names are so similar, ha ha). Here, Millie is the mother to Pinky, and Willie may be the grandma or Millie's sister. Did it happen? Did they kill Edgar, the ne'er do well who was involved with all three, and just create some alternative family? Who knows. And more importantly, who cares?

I normally don't give any mention to music, unless it's really bad or really good. Here, it's the former. Terrible, spitty flute playing tries to make this seem arty, but is just annoying and out of character for the scenes.

This is an utterly forgettable experience, with no concern whatsoever for any deeper meaning. The acting is the only saving grace here. Shelley Duvall is both pathetic and creepy, while strangely engaging. Sissy Spacek really makes the character shine with tiny expressions that convey very well. She's believable both as a simpleton and a sophisticate. It is original, however, I'll give it that. Overall, unsatisfying and irrelevant.

I have seen this brilliant masterpiece twice and in one particular scene, just as dreamlike as it truly is, a total vision of the two central characters, played perfectly astonishingly well and with a dash of campy perfection, by Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, that these women were, again, in my opinion, the same person.

With the fact that almost everyone seems to be ignoring Millie (Duvall), in some scenes, to a point where they are being downright rude and disrespectful to and about her, makes me believe her isolation and constant need for perfection (her apartment, her hair, her coordinated clothing, her endless chatter of the latest appliances and recipes) and constant strive for wanting to be the best Hostess on the Planet, I believe she created Pinky (Spacek), who also had the name, Mildred, in her private fantasy life, who is a total contrast of her.

The idea came so fast to me, maybe too fast, to understand it all but I felt the need to jot it down. I want to believe Millie is aware of co-workers and neighbors ignoring her and openly being disinterested in what she is saying but I wonder if it is because the "perfect" side of these characters is really not there.

Well, this is only my interpretation of a person who is isolated and has created her own fantasy life of a single career woman, who has a lavishly styled pad, goes to the local bar to relax, and sits poolside for some sun, yet is completely and utterly lonely.

My only missing piece to this puzzle would be the third woman, played by Janice Rule, as the mysterious Artist and Bartender, and if in fact Millie and Pinky are pieces of her Creations and the constant maternal nurturing that overlaps with these three women, throughout the film.

It is, hands down, the best character study piece I have ever encountered and is brilliantly acted by all central players involved.

This is a dreamy and at the same time intensely realistic film about the life of one or two or three women living empty, lonely lives in a small California desert town. If you have not already seen it, and if you like any films by Ingmar Bergman or Robert Altman or David Lynch, then stop reading this or any other review and see the film for yourself.

The fun of a movie like this, that is so realistic that it has no "correct" interpretation and even the movie's director and writer is not entirely sure what it "means," is to come up with your own theories and share with others who saw the film. My theory is that the three women are all separate individuals, who are alike in the sense that we are all one, but who are not alike in the way female characters/actresses are the same person in Persona, That Obscure Object of Desire, or Mulholland Drive. The sweet old couple really are Pinky's parents, and the suicide attempt leaves Pinky with amnesia, which is why she forgets her parents and confuses herself with Millie as she tries to reconstruct her life. Poor old Edgar gets shot by one of the women, or maybe all three, who make it look like an accident. It makes no sense for his body to be hidden in the tires, as that would not be an effective way of hiding him, the stench would attract attention, and the staged accident is consistent with a traditional body disposal. But maybe it is his body, just because stuff that happens in real life often makes no sense.

The real fun of this movie for me was the shock of the familiar, in picking out the tacky details of real life circa 1977. I was 20 when the film came out, and yes I do remember making shrimp cocktails, and cooking pigs-in-a-blanket like it was a new gourmet treat, and sorting out Sociables crackers eating the broken ones and saving the whole ones for company with canned cheese squirted on. I even had one of those silly laugh-toys (not a hag face, just a little box in a felt bag) that made the laughing sound and cracked everyone up. I didn't smoke Trues or drive a Ford Pinto, but I was around others who did.

And the Shelly Duvall character, with the heart of gold who lies constantly to try to make herself more interesting and who tries so hard to make everything perfect she annoys all the people she is trying to befriend? Too real.

I've had the Criterion DVD of this for quite some time before I finally managed to sit down and watch it. The film came at the tail-end of director Altman's most creative period, and it's not one that can be easily categorized - much like his earlier (and equally demanding) IMAGES (1972); incidentally, both are original screenplays by Altman himself and are essentially dream-like and rambling, thus leaving room for (respectively) various interpretations and much improvisation.

Anyway, the 'narrative' concerns the odd relationship between the titular figures: Sissy Spacek is the inexperienced and reticent type; at her new work-place, an old folks' home, she meets Shelley Duvall who, on the other hand, is worldly and garrulous - but no less lonely; Janice Rule, then, is a bohemian artist whom they occasionally cross paths with (her strange designs adorn the floor of the pool at the apartment house where the other two live). For the first 90 minutes or so, there's hardly any plot: we see Spacek and Duvall at their work routine (where they're pretty much ignored by their co-workers), then bonding when the former moves in with the latter (again, their neighbors aren't very friendly), and occasionally visiting the bar out in the desert (complete with motor-track and shooting-range) owned by Rule and her husband. Eventually, however, the two grow apart as Duvall begins to find Spacek's maladroit ways a nuisance - the last straw is reached when Duvall comes home with Rule's husband on her arms and unceremoniously shifts Spacek into the guest room: the latter takes this dismissal badly and attempts suicide in the pool!

It's here that the film really starts to get weird: when Spacek finally comes to, she's a totally different person - assertive and sensual, she basically takes up the characteristics that had previously been Duvall's, by which the latter is confused and becomes the one to feel awkward! Nevertheless, she tries to help by sending for Spacek's parents in Texas so that they can be near her: however, her room-mate doesn't appreciate the gesture as, apparently, being struck by temporary amnesia, she claims not to know them! Later, Rule's husband turns up once again at their apartment - having deserted his pregnant wife; Duvall, however, grabs Spacek and goes to Rule's aid - Duvall asks Spacek to fetch a doctor, but the latter seems dumb-founded by all of this...so that the baby emerges still-born! Following this is a quite extraordinary surreal dream sequence, which leads us into the finale - where Spacek is tending bar at Rule's place: when a patron appears, she calls on to her mother Duvall(!); it transpires that the latter is taking care of Spacek and Rule who, for some reason, seem to have regressed to a child-like state!

The script provides an interesting analogy between the protagonists' character names: Spacek, called Pinky throughout, is really named Mildred; Duvall is Millie, which is short for Mildred; while Rule's character is referred to as Willie (probably a diminutive of Wilhelmina) and which, of course, rhymes with Millie! Incidentally, the presence of the twins (co-workers of Spacek and Duvall) anticipates the film's later personality switch a' la PERSONA (1966) and PERFORMANCE (1970). Comedy, though of the neurotic kind one usually associates with Woody Allen, is present during the course of the film - such as the neighbor Duvall fancies but whom she rejects due to his persistent flu, and ex-film director John Cromwell's appearance as Spacek's senile father. While the general apathy shown towards Spacek and Duvall also raises a nervous chuckle, it seems exaggerated to me - for instance, after Spacek's spell in hospital, Duvall asks her superiors if she can come back to work...but they maintain to not even recall her (though, admittedly, this ties up with Spacek's own earlier 'rejection' of her parents)! Despite the emphasis Altman places on the murals (painted by one Bodhi Wind), no explanation is given regarding their harrowing nature other than the fact that they're the handiwork of the eccentric Rule, so that their point remains obscure to the last.

I would've liked to listen to Atman's accompanying Audio Commentary - however, as I've explained elsewhere, I've been forced to by-pass such lengthy supplements for the time being...and, in any case, from past experience I'd say that his observations seemed to be just as aloof as the films themselves!

Robert Altman's 1977 film 3 Women, which he wrote and directed from a dream he had, is not a bad film, but not a great film either. It is one of those films, ala Robert Browning, whose reach exceeds its grasp, but not in the good way. It is intended to work on a dream level, yet it is too realistic in its detail for much of the film to be seen as all dream, and not quite bizarre enough to be real dream, especially in its far too forced, and ultimately failed, ending.

Some critics have likened the film to Ingmar Bergman's Persona, but this is a stretch. Even though that film is a bit overrated in the Bergman canon, 3 Women is nowhere in that league as a work of art: not as film, social commentary, nor work of symbolism. It has some elements in common with Roman Polanski's Repulsion, about another female misfit on the verge of insanity, as well as to the later, and far inferior, David Lynch mystery film Mulholland Drive, which was also about two women in a dreamy scenario.

The film follows the life of two lonely women who can only be called 'losers'. Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) is an ugly worker at a California old folks' health spa. She is unpopular, shunned by her co-workers- who ignore her blather despite her not realizing it, yet lives in a world of her own making, where all people like her, she is among the popular set, and life is made better by magazine ads and cooking recipes that involve all pre-processed foods and no real cooking ability. She is so clueless that every time she drives her mustard colored heap of a car her yellow skirt always gets caught in the door, and hangs outside. She also wears hideous yellow bathrobes with hoods to her apartment complex's pool, yet thinks all the men desire her.

She becomes co-workers and roommates ($55 a month- those were the days!) with an even odder girl who comes to work at the spa, one day, and seems to lack a past, even though she claims to be from Texas, like Millie. Her name is also Mildred, although she goes by the nickname Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek). Pinky is a redhead who seems almost autistic (as she would be labeled these days), and is even less capable of existing in the world....The third woman of the film is an older woman, Willie Hart (Janice Rule), who is pregnant, cold, silent, and paints bizarre man-hating pictures of pregnant gargoyle-like creatures on tiles and in pools, that seem to betray her bitterness, especially toward her no account husband, Edgar (Robert Fortier), a buffoonish would be macho man, and ex-stunt double in Western films, who is as big a joke to his sex as the two girls are to theirs, due to his penchant for guns, motorcycles, and beer. The two of them own the apartment complex, The Purple Sage- a sort of pre-Melrose Place Melrose Place for losers, the two girls share an apartment in, and also own a shitty bar, Dodge City, out in the desert, where macho loses race dirt bikes...Then, Altman tanks the film with wan surrealism that fails...Clearly the film is trying to show that all three women are merely aspects of one person- likely Millie, since Pinky is a younger Millie who shunned her name, and Willie is an older Millie whose name's first name is an upside down M...Despite its oneiric pretensions, and some pluses, the film, as a whole, never fully comes together, and ends as a pale muddle of Freudian nonsense, and pseudo-symbolism; such as Pinky's death and rebirth in the pool, that, while interesting, at times, is best described as that misfit beast- 'the noble failure.' Robert Altman has always been a hit and miss director....and, unlike Michelangelo Antonioni's best films, which often seem to end not at their chronological ends, this film's ending is not the work of a carefully placed artist's inventiveness, just stylized randomness rationalized after the fact.

One of the best movies I've ever seen.It's closeness to Bergman's "Persona" is strongly felt,though both films are very individual pieces of art of two very different artists.It's a movie that leaves you thinking about it long after you finished watching it.One of it's strongest sides is a wonderful music that comes back to my mind every time I think about the film's disturbing images.The acting is excellent,especially by Spacek and Duvall and the operator's work is gorgeous. The film is about two common,mediocre,untalented(one,Millie,pretentious and pathetic and another one,Pinky,a grown-up infant who needs constant support and care)young women doing simple jobs in the Old Men's House(this is what they know and can do)and much older,quiet,reclusive but gifted artist Willie who paints beautiful murals describing strange male and female creatures in violent and sexual acts.I think these paintings are the key to understanding what kind of psychological relations Willie has with the outer world.This explains her estrangement and almost total silence during the film,giving preference to her wordless expression in an artful manner of her inner state and attitude towards the world.Actually this silent woman fells as a victim to the three other main characters - first losing her unfaithful,hard drinking friend-husband(?) Edgar as both Millie and then "new" Pinky in turn sleep with him(though both know very well that Willie is expecting a child)and then her baby when Pinky having been sent to call a doctor,just watches indifferently(this indifference is especially strongly felt after the Millie's "bloody" slap) as Millie is hopelessly trying to help Willie and finally fails. The ultimate expression of this unbearable cruelty of being is the dead-born baby,who "refuses to be born alive" into such a world.The end is open to interpretations:it may be easy to understand why Edgar could have been killed by Willie(though it is never revealed who did it),but it would be strange to discover that it is Pinky and Millie who actually did it(NOBODY FORCED them to sleep with Edgar and cause pain to Willie!). Love,depression,envy(What does Pinky think when she watches Willie painting?),psychological violence and hidden hatred are all interrelated in this superb human drama of an exceptionally talented film director.If you like cinema as an art,you won't regret watching it.Highly recommended.

I picked up this DVD from the public library, mainly because it is part of the Criterion Collection, which usually represents pretty good films. But egads! I'm sorry, but adding spastic flute music and very, VERY long fades of bad art work do not a good movie make. It just drrrrraaaaaaggggggggggggggggggged, and I felt like Robert Altman was thinking, let's make the worst movie we can, add some unbelievably pretentious and overblown "arty" elements to it, and see how many sheep out there we can get to say "oooooooo, wow, it's AMAZING! So cutting edge. So cryptic." Guys....it's awful! I usually can live without violence in movies, but when Spacek did a header into the pool, I cheered out loud. However, what followed seemed like an hour of hospital room coma scenes and I thought, my GOD, it has to get better. And that's what kept me watching, as I think is the case with many folks out there. We need to just find the ability to chuckle at ourselves a bit and say "ok, Altman got me on this one." Don't watch it again and again, searching for the meaning in it all. In the literature included with the DVD there is a statement, something like, "It was Altman's goal to shoot the entire movie with no screenplay." That explains why we see, literally 45 seconds of footage of a person walking from a car into a bar. Just walking. Nothing's going to fall on his head. Nothing's going to happen. He's just walking. Still walking. Anyway, if you want to watch a good movie about dysfunctional relationships and women, rent "The Hours".