3 Women (1977)

An awkward, mousy young girl worships her older, more outgoing co-worker; when they move in together, their increasingly toxic friendship unravels amid strange lies and cruel behavior under the constant threat of simmering rage.

Robert Altman directs this disturbing classic of psychological conflict, heavily influenced by Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, in which Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall play lead characters whose identities seem to merge throughout the film. I’ve always found both Spacek and Duvall disconcertingly odd, and the actresses use that quality to excellent effect here. Duvall’s Millie, in particular, is haunting: her character talks incessantly about cooking recipes and fictitious ex-boyfriends, but is repeatedly ignored by everyone around her. Altman captures Millie’s essence in striking scenes where she holds one-sided conversations with interchangeable extras and minor characters who pass right by her as if she were invisible. The fact that Spacek’s Pinky looks up to Millie as a social butterfly is almost crushingly sad.

To give you a sense of how weird 3 Women is – and you should be warned that the 2nd half is a complete avant-garde arthouse mindfuck – the third female in question is a pregnant artist with almost no dialogue who stalks the margins of the film. She paints a series of highly unsettling murals (depicting what appears to be primitive humans engaged in sexualized, animalistic warfare) which serve as symbolic representations of the film’s central conflicts and trauma.

Shot without a finished screenplay and inspired by some weird-ass dreams Altman had, 3 Women has the hallmarks of self-indulgent disaster. Instead, it plays right into Altman’s unfettered, free-wheeling style. The performances are excellent, Gerald Busby’s atonal score is a perfect fit, and, perhaps most importantly, it is often hilarious in a pitch-black, existentially bleak way. A feverish masterpiece that stands among the director’s best work.