THREE WOMEN

In 1977, Altman moved into the realm of dreams with THREE WOMEN, a film which deals with the nature of the female psyche in mythic, surrealistic terms. The film moves from a social satire concentrating on mythic imagery to an elusive and harrowing ending, among the most fascinating in contemporary American cinema. The story presents three incomplete personalities, each trying to survive with one another and their own misgivings. Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duval) is a woman who lives in House and Garden. She is competent at her job, pretty and kindhearted, but everything in her life seems to center around a television or magazine advertisement. Her clipped recipes, her purple and yellow apartment decorated with just the right mix of “contemporary” and “wholesome” reflect an empty individual whose diary reveals the charade she lives. Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek), a small town Texas girl who migrated to California, seeks the good life, only to encounter ridicule, rejection, and terror instead. Her disheartening experiences leave her to face a suicide attempt with unfamiliar loneliness. Willie Hart, played by Cincinnati native Janice Rule, is a mysterious, pregnant artist who draws giants murals of reptilian creatures. Filmed in just seven weeks entirely in and around Palm Springs, THREE WOMEN fuses style and substance in a European temperament which examines the images of lower-middle-class Southern California life in the Seventies.