3 Women (1977)

Speaking of thoughts on Altman, after Tanner '88, I was still kind of on the fence. Now, thank you viewers, for returning to witness the second part of our show. 3 Women is an amazing film. It's definitely one of those films that glides along, as if it were a dream. It's immensely deep and yet grabs your attention and holds it throughout.

Right from the start, I noticed a twins motif, but didn't know what would come of it, as the title is 3 Women, not 2 Women. The opening omages of elderly people walking around a pool, being helped by their younger counterparts, all these couples manuvering around in the water. Not to mention the twins that work at the Center. But, the third woman, Willie, is definitely far less involved in the overall plot than Millie or Pinky. In fact, they are pretty much the sole characters in the film, they garner far more screen time than anyone else.

These two characters, Millie and Pinky, both interested me to no end. Millie is very overbearing and Pinky obviously looks up to her a great deal, accepting her somewhat-domineering nature. She's enamored with Millie and you can tell, sometimes, she's simply basking in her presence. Pinky doesn't seem to notice that Millie is almost all talk, as many of the men she flirts with and comes on to have no interest whatsoever. You have to wonder if she's too dense to even notice this. Then, in one moment, when she calls down to a man from their apartment complex, up on the balcony, he pretends not to hear her and in one expression from Shelly Duvall, you know that she knows. Yet, she sucks it up and keeps pushing on, determined to be noticed and appreciated, yet the only man we ever really see her with is Willie's lecherous husband.

The film really was spellbinding for me, in many unexpected ways. For example, when Pinky is upstairs, reading Millie's diary and she starts coming up the stairs, I was really nervous, hoping that she wouldn't get caught. When Pinky accidentally (or maybe not...check out the next paragraph) punches Millie's card at work, it immediately registers as being a catastrophic event at work and I remember saying "oh no" out loud when she did it.

I have to wonder what Pinky was like before coming out to California. Was she the same shy, reserved person? And did she have any friends back home? And if so, did she cling to them the same way she clings to Millie? In fact, I have to wonder about the 'transference' of personalities that takes place. Is she simply being malicious because of the things she's read in Millie's diary and the way she's been treated, or is there something supernatural, something unexplainable at work? Has this been her plan all along, to inspire guilt in Millie for mistreating her by attempting suicide? And what of the Social Security number, was it an innocent blunder taken too far, or was Pinky's motive far more sinister?

After Pinky's injury, there's a shot of Millie looking into her ICU room, and her reflection in the glass is doubled. My first instinct, of course, was the whole Two Women in One Body theory. And, maybe it's true in 3 Women. Yet, something that can either make or break that idea is the end of the film. All three women have been entangled into this web, and their personalities have all been transferred. Nobody acts like anybody else in the ending sequence, but they all act strangely. To me, it seemed like all three women, together, made up one entire woman, and throughout the film, they exchange traits at points from the same pool of this 'entire woman'. That would explain Willie's speaking at the end, Pinky's childish demeanor and Millie's maternal presence. Truthfully, I have no idea, but I can't wait to see it again.