Monday, July 4, 2011

3 Women

3 Women (Criterion #230).
1977 20th Century Fox.
Starring: Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek, Janice Rule, Robert Fortier, Ruth Nelson, John Cromwell, Sierra Pecheur, Craig Richard Nelson
Director: Robert Altman
Buy 3 Women from Amazon. Blu-ray edition hits stores on September 30th.

Robert Altman once had a dream which he did not completely understand, but he still adapted it into a film treatment with the intent of not using an actual script. 20th Century Fox greenlit the idea regardless.

Out in the California desert, newcomer Pinky Rose (Spacek) gets a job at a senior care center as a therapist. Another employee, Millie (Duvall), is told to help train Pinky. Millie fancies herself a social butterfly, and seems oblivious to the fact that everyone who knows her is making fun of her. Pinky sees Millie differently, and eventually they become roommates at an apartment complex co-owned by the third woman in our story, Willie (Rule). Willie is pregnant and married to a man named Edgar (Fortier). She also constantly paints elaborate and surreal murals with violent and sexual imagery at the apartment complex (including one at the bottom of the complex's swimming pool) and the bar that she and Edgar run. Edgar also sees nothing wrong with cheating on his pregnant wife; he sleeps with both Millie and Pinky behind Willie's back.

Pinky admires Millie enough that she seems to be attempting to become Millie, even reading aloud passages from Millie's diary. In return, Millie treats Pinky horribly, attacking her for the most mundane social faux pas. After an argument one night, Pinky leaves the apartment and takes a spill from a balcony into the swimming pool. Pinky is comatose for a time, and Millie brings in Pinky's parents from Texas.

Just after Pinky emerges from her coma, she becomes a completely new woman: the outgoing, aggressive and confident woman that Millie so desperately tries to portray in public. Millie, meanwhile, finds herself turning into what Pinky used to be prior to her accident; meek, passive, awkward. Later, Edgar abandons Willie, and both Pinky and Millie find themselves trying to deliver her baby themselves...with tragic consequences. The ordeal of Willie's child being stillborn further transforms all three women into what seems to be a very odd and curious situation: the three women now live together, Pinky refers to Millie as her "mother", and talks to Willie just like a sister. Edgar's fate is unclear, though.

Highly recommended film, although it does take a while to really get going. It's worth the wait, though, with excellent performances from Duvall and Spacek.

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