Our Shelley Duvall celebration continues with a rare big screen presentation of Robert Altman’s surreal 1977 thriller, 3 Women (in a beautiful new 4K restoration), co-starring Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall in her Cannes Best Actress award-winning role!
In a dusty, underpopulated California resort town, a naive southern waif, Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek, following her Oscar-nominated turn in Carrie), idolizes and befriends her fellow nurse, the would-be sophisticate and “thoroughly modern” Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall, whose funny/haunting performance garnered her the 1977 Best Actress award at Cannes). When Millie takes Pinky in as her roommate, Pinky’s hero worship evolves into something far stranger and more sinister than either could have anticipated. Featuring brilliant performances from Spacek and Duvall, this dreamlike masterpiece from legendary Oscar-nominated director Robert Altman (Nashville, M*A*S*H) careens from the humorous to the chilling to the surreal, resulting in one of the most unusual and compelling films of the 1970s, one whose mysterious vibes reverberated through later films like Mulholland Drive. (Dir. by Robert Altman, 1977, USA, 124 mins., Rated R)