The Cinematheque

“Shelley Duvall gives a brilliant performance that captures the reality, absurdity, and poignance of the character in a way that has never been done before … Altman’s greatest achievement in this film is the creation of this character and her environment.”

Marsha Kinder, Film Quarterly

The magnetic screen presence of Shelley Duvall, who died in July, is like none other. Her ability to shift from floating imaginative play to grounded psychological realism (and all the gradations in between) was exceptional, whether in a musical, a horror film, or an episode of Faerie Tale Theatre. In her Cannes-awarded turn for Robert Altman’s 3 Women, all of these possible ways of acting shimmer in the California sun. Millie (Duvall), Pinky (Sissy Spacek), and Willie (Janice Rule) are the mythic trinity of the title. Millie works at a health centre for the elderly, where she meets her new coworker Pinky Rose, whom she adopts as a roommate. Willie, less prominent in the plot but just as important to its unfolding, is a muralist. Altman often used painting metaphors to describe his films, with actors as the living pigment necessary to realize the work. Here, the three principals drift around each other, meet, and combine in ways that still seem like a singular feat of haunting, stirring magic.

“Looks back to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona and anticipates David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive; all three movies revolve around a central female dyad, the dynamics of which are protean and radically altered by a destabilizing love.”

Melissa Anderson, Artforum

“Altman’s most pure, in-house production if not his most personal film … It’s the work of a major director [whose] freeform style is the most significant challenge to the American distribution system since Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.”

Tom Allen, Village Voice