3 Women
 

PostED ON 19.10.2023

A very young woman arrives from her native Texas to work in California. Frail and colourless to the extreme, she strikes up a somewhat unhealthy friendship with her future flatmate, a garrulous, tall brunette, Millie.

Together, they regularly visit a third woman, an artist who paints strange, aggressive pictures on the walls of a swimming pool. 3 Women is certainly one of Robert Altman's finest films, and one of his most mysterious too. There's no need to look for logic in a work born of a dream by Altman, who also wrote the screenplay. Instead, let yourself be carried away by the atmosphere, as gently hypnotic as it is tormented. Through the inner journey of these three characters, a portrait of a certain America emerges.

Altman, who has never ceased to explore his own country throughout his career, reveals, behind the acid-coloured dreams of idealised California, a reality of dust and shoddy buildings, where no real contact seems possible, and where we move from a state of almost moronic innocence to one of brutal, shocking cynicism.

3 Women, 1977 © DR

Paradoxically, Altman does not see the fate of his three women as a failure. It is more the state of transformation, the physical and moral metamorphoses dictated by the place, that seems to fascinate him. His film, accompanied by a mineral soundtrack à la Chabrol in the 1960s, seems to be constantly seeking to follow its protagonists in their quest for solutions, their solutions for survival, even if it means a hazy, insane version of life. 

V. A.

SCREENINGS

3 Women by Robert Altman (1977 2h04)
Institut Lumière (Villa) - Thursday, 19 October at 9pm
Cinéma Comoedia – Friday, 20 October at 2pm
Rillieux – Saturday, 21 October at 8pm