3 Women
The From Below Microcinema will be showing Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977) on Wednesday, May 29th, at 8pm.
Here is the link to reserve a seat. Doors will be at 7:50 and we’re starting the movie at 8:10!
The boundary between the identities of roommate-coworkers Millie (Shelly Duval) and Pinky (Sissy Spacek) begins to erode, while Willie (Janice Rule) paints unsettling murals on the walls of an empty pool, awaiting the birth of her child.
Robert Altman’s acclaimed 3 Women (1977), allegedly adapted from a dream Altman had one night, plays like a very American response to Ingmar Bergamn’s Persona (1966). Mirrors, pools, reflections, and doubling abound in a dusty, pastel California atmosphere of uncanny dis-ease. Duvall and Spacek shine, giving us a strange and engrossing dive into identity formation, intimacy, and the struggle to find a place to flourish in a patriarchal world. I’ve lamented to many of you in the past how cinematically under-explored the common experience is of sharing your home with a stranger; that economic and psychological endeavor of getting a roommate. This movie offers by far the best treatment of the topic.
Notably, Janice Rule, who plays Willie in the film, was working on completing her PhD in clinical psychoanalysis from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute at the time of production. She would go on to be a practicing clinician specializing in the treatment of actors for the next 25 years until her death.