Part of Weekend Classics
In a dusty, underpopulated California resort town, a naive Southern waif, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), idolizes and befriends her fellow nurse, the would-be sophisticate and “thoroughly modern” Millie Lammoreaux (the brilliant Shelley Duvall). When Millie takes Pinky in as her roommate, Pinky’s hero worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, this dreamlike masterpiece from Robert Altman careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s. (Synopsis from the Criterion Collection)
See also: THE SHINING (Fri, Aug 2 | Mon, Aug 5)
“Throughout, Duvall is brilliant: she coins a brand-new caricature of the confident yet clueless single female, then suggests a real person underneath.” —Michael Sragrow, New Yorker “Duvall shares spectacular on-screen chemistry with her co-stars [Sissy] Spacek and [Janice] Rule… Duvall’s dynamic with Spacek in 3 WOMEN is just as believable as a fractured friendship as her dynamic with Nicholson in THE SHINING is believable as a fractured marriage.” —Ben Sherlock, Screenrant “3 WOMEN is a daring piece of cinema that glides along the edge of weirdness and somehow manages not to fall off. And I’ve never seen a film that’s more poetic and accurate about the radical extent that the human personality will bend and morph in an effort to cleave to its object of desire.” —Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine
