Midlred "Millie" works as a physical therapist at a health spa for the elderly. She gets a new co-worker, the shy, timid Pinky, whose real name is coincidentally also Mildred. Pinky is fascinated by and adores Millie. Upon finding out that Millie is looking for a roommate, she applies. The two women thus live in an apartment complex near a pool with painting by pregnant artist Willie, whose husband is ex-stuntman Edgar. Pinky tries to imitate Millie. When a friend cancels a dinner and Millie wants to have an affair with Edgar, she starts an argument with Pinky, who is so devastated she tries to commit suicide by jumping in the pool. Upon waking up from a coma, Pinky becomes more assertive in the apartment, while Millie becomes timid. Willie gives stillbirth. Edgar dies in a gun accident, while Pinky and Millie work at a tavern.
The peculiar art-film "3 Women" was included in Roger Ebert's Great Movies List, but today one is more inclined to side with Ebert's colleague Gene Siskel who criticized said movie for being too vague and obscure to truly edge itself into a greater impression. The director and writer Robert Altman seems to have started the film as a forerunner to "Single White Female", but then abruptly cancelled the thriller potentials to switch to Bergman's surreal classic "Persona", where scenes get increasingly confusing and disorienting as the movie progresses. The title is also wrong—there are actually only two fully explored women protagonists, Millie and Pinky, while the third one, pool painter Willie, is so underused and sparse that even the supporting character Edgar has more screen time than her. The abstract storyline shows a switch between Pinky and Millie after the shy, introverted Pinky tries to commit suicide in the pool, and is "reborn" as a new, assertive and extroverted character who takes control, and even summons the courage to try to seduce Edgar (in a deliciously funny sequence where she takes a sip from beer, but then just spits it out at Edgar's face and bursts into laughter, a rare moment when the movie comes alive), while Millie seems to take her personality, when she suddenly switches from being the "center" of the world to being a confused, insecure person nobody pays attention to anymore. Some set-ups are there (Pinky training shooting with Edgar), yet too much of these random events do not seem to go anywhere in the end, leaving only Altman's intention of making a dream. Symbolism alone does not make a great movie.
Grade:++
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