3 Women

3 women
Originally uploaded by livingfilm.

I would like to take a moment to talk about what I consider one of Robert Altman's most enigmatic films, 3 Women. It's a pretty strange film. It's surprising that there was ever a time when a major American studio (20th Century Fox) would allow a film like this to be made on their dime. How things have changed! Altman claims to have actually dreamt the film, including the title and cast, while staying in the hospital with his ailing wife. This accounts for the feeling the film has of watching a fever dream. Strange, yet fascinating.

Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek play the lead characters. I really love both actresses very much, and this film features each in top form. Sissy Spacek is Pinky Rose, a young, simple wide-eyed Texas girl, who is employed as a nursing home attendant in a small town in the California desert. Shelley Duvall plays Millie Lammoreaux, a kooky, over-chatty, nursing home attendant appointed to train Pinky Rose. Millie lives an almost imaginary life as a sophisticated 1970's single woman, at least the way she sees it portrayed in Cosmopolitan, and Mc Call's Magazines. She is almost like a bizarre combination of both Mary and Rhoda. Millie will make a huge impression on Pinky Rose, and eventually takes Pinky in as a Room-mate. Slowly, Pinky Rose begins to assume Millie's personality, and identity, and things get pretty unusual.

The film is beautifully photographed, The interior scenes are under-lit with the blazing California sun creeping through the windows (you can always sense the desert is near, yet you only occasionally see it in this film), giving many scenes a dreamy almost hallucinatory feeling. Then there are the paintings. The third woman if you were wondering, is less a character and more a motif Janice Rule is Willie Hart, a pregnant painter and saloon keeper, who seems to spend all of her time painting enormous nightmarish murals. The paintings dominate the scenes they are in and also add to the discomforting feeling the film has.

The film is also full of humor, if you were feeling that it was sounding a little too dramatic.

I Highly Recommend this film.