Presented in collaboration with Nature of Things for their “3 Women” exhibit. Come early to see a preshow of Les Blank shorts!
Robert Altman, 1977, USA, 124 mins
Altman’s dreamlike study of down-and-out women existing in a liminal state between reality and fantasy in a tiny California town shows the filmmaker at the summit of his powers as both surreal image-maker and humane storyteller. After having worked with the great Shelley Duvall throughout the decade, from McCabe & Mrs. Miller to Thieves Like Us to Nashville, Altman gifted her a role of astonishing depth and pathos in Millie, a gabby, self-involved health spa worker whose life intersects with—and inexplicably refracts—that of a mysterious new coworker named Pinky, played by the brilliantly mercurial Spacek. Altman’s oneiric vision, inspired by a dream (and reminiscent of Bergman’s Personain its depiction of women’s lives doubling and taking on one another’s traits), is a singular mix of otherworldly and earthy.