Twenty years before David Lynch started splintering personalities and swapping identities, Altman adapted his own dream (and a bit of Bergman) to create this startlingly enigmatic psychodrama. Millie (Duvall), a hapless would-be sophisticate, takes impressionable Southern waif Pinky (Spacek) in as her roommate at the Purple Sage singles complex, but Pinky’s hero-worship soon grows darker and more sinister. The film begins as a humorous send-up of life in an under-populated desert resort town but soon careens off the rails to become chilling and, ultimatley, surreal. Often forgoing literal causality for ambiguous allusions and resonances, THREE WOMEN is held together by brilliant performances from Duvall and Spacek to become an unexpected gem from the maestro of epic tapestries of Americana.

“3 Women is a daring piece of cinema that glides along the edge of weirdness and somehow manages not to fall off.” – Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine

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