Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) is an introverted young woman starting work at a health spa in California. She is so shy that on her first day at work, she doesn't even challenge her co-worker Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall) who mistakes her for a client. Millie needs a roommate and Pinky quickly snaps it up. However Pinky's quiet loner nature turns Millie against her. After Millie berates Pinky, Pinky takes a suicidal dive into the pool leaving her in a coma. When she wakes up, there's a change in Pinky and Millie finds strange occurrences perpetrated by Pinky.

The first half is fine with Spacek and Duvall playing to their comfort zones. I kept wondering where this movie is going with this. Then it takes a hard turn into Single White Female situation. That is a great turn but it doesn't continue as I expected. It goes into a surreal sojourn in some kind of poetic journey. It's definitely a surprise but I'm not convinced that it's a good surprise. I think a more simpler road with the two girls would be more compelling especially considering the third woman is only a minor character. Maybe there's a point in the surreal poetry that I missed.

Pinky Rose (Sissy Spacek) is an awkward adolescent who starts work at a spa in the California desert. She becomes overly attached to fellow spa attendant, Millie (Shelley Duvall),when she becomes Millie's room-mate.

Roger Ebert named this the best film of 1977, but despite the praise, for twenty-seven years, the film was unavailable on home video. Thank you, Criterion, for finding these lost gems and giving them the proper treatment they deserve!

What we actually have are two women, both named Mildred (though neither goes by it). Yes, there is a third, but the relationship between Pinky and Millie is the core here. And it is odd. Not only are these two actresses very unconventional in appearance, but they are just so strange. While Robert Altman deserves a great deal of credit, the real stars of this production are Spacek and Duvall, who transformed this from a script into a film.

Robert Altman portrays a group of women who apparently start switching personalities. Much of the movie is left deliberately vague, but that adds to its neat factor. As in every Altman movie, the dialogue often overlaps, and the cast members are clearly making up the roles themselves.

Sissy Spacek and Shelley Duvall do as good a job as one can expect from them. But don't be surprised if the whole movie confuses you; "3 Women" is not any kind of overblown Hollywood production. It's just Altman doing what he does best. Worth seeing.

Making up a social security number. Hmm...