3 Women by Anthoney Baker / Myke Foster

3 women by Robert Altman is starts off with a stunning visual experience that reminds the viewer that that truly good cinema does not need to rely on dialogue and that a profound story can be shown and not told. This enchantment, however, comes to an abrupt stop when the film reaches the second act break. Any viewer unfamiliar with Altman, or his directorial style, is in for a frustrating time when setting out to take in 3 Women. Although the first 30 minutes of the film take the viewer on a journey into the personal life of Millie Lammoreaux, played by Duvall, and her new roommate, a young girl named Pinky, played by Sissy Spacek, It is not long before we realize that Millie is socially awkward and her overly expositional it is, in fact, just how her character converses. On and on she continues and her neighbors, co-workers, everyone, ignores her. Pinky is a young, fun going girl who has a obvious attraction for Millie in the beginning and starts taking on her personal traits as the film progresses.

Once the two characters are established the story meanders long enough for the viewer to really start getting irritated by Millie and losing interest with Pinky. Only glimpses into the odd and strange world are there to remind the viewer that “not everything is as it seems”. The film is shot with a heavy emphasis of water. The third woman, named Willie, played by Janice Rule, is a muralist who paints unsettling man/lizard hybrids on the bottom of swimming pools. The audience is shown these murals so many times that it gets exhausting by the end of the film. Notwithstanding, the visual treatment of this film is where it shines. The desert backdrop never feels real. Not in a Hollywood backdrop sort of way but in an utterly desolate kind of way. This was Altman’s greatest achievement in 3 women.

One the story gets going the two established roles of Millie and Pinky start to switch. The steps the characters took to reach this midpoint of this film do deserve greater examination. After being stood up by a group of “friends”, Millie reaches her lowest point and leaves her apartment looking for attention. She brings home Willie’s husband and kicks Pinky out of the bedroom. Pinky then jumps into a swimming pool and goes into a coma. From the surface this series of events would seem rather trivial and undefined. They are, in fact, the most “real” moments of the film. The raw emotion and desperate situation that Millie and Pinky are in is suffocating. This series of events however is lost by films and the story is so open to interpretation that any justification by this review would be even more trivial that the events that unfolded in the film.

If the assumption is correct that the end of this film was all a dream by the Grandmother, who is Willie, then this film does a fine job of being open ended, having no real narrative and leaving the viewer flummoxed. Perhaps viewer taste is not sophisticated enough to fully grasp this film. Perhaps, or maybe viewers are just too accustom to the three act character arch that every “good” film in existence has, excluding this one.