Robert Altman, supposedly based this film on a dream that he had which he then turned into a screenplay and it sure seems like it. Altman appears to be making it up as he goes along using Persona as his guide. Altman's best films are satires particularly on American life. This is probably the best part in the film, poking fun at Shelly Duvall's shallow character Millie Lammoreaux. A woman who's non stop prater about almost any subject makes her the shallowest of the shallow.
Where Altman belly flops is when he starts to get all surreal. Again, obviously influenced by Bergman, he has the women's personalities merge and exchange with each other. It sounds more interesting than it actually is. Bergman can pull off something like this because he clearly knows where he wants to go in Persona. He is examining aspects of a woman's personalty using a distancing technique in the filmmaking.
Altman for all his arty shots of water and weird murals seems to be fumbling his way through his inconclusive ending where it appears the Three Women have exchanged roles as parent, sibling and some kind of earth mother type.
The acting is variable, Shelly Duvall is very good in the film. Altman had recognized early in her career that she was an extremely talented performer and used her in many of his films. Sissy Spacek, does her child/woman acting thing that she had previously used in Badlands and Carrie and doesn't really bring anything interesting to her part. Janice Rule is third billed in the film, but she has a nothing part.
I saw Three Women the week after the first Star Wars had been released, there were about three other people in the theater. Star Wars pretty much doomed this type of art film from occasionally being made in American studios into extinction.
124 minutes, written by Robert Altman.
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