3 Women

Aroview: Inspired by a dream, dir. Robert Altman shapes a memorably ethereal drama around the idiosyncratic qualities of actresses Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, who are superb in their custom-built roles.

Nursing in a Californian desert town, Duvall’s chirpy nymphette takes impressionable trainee Spacek under her wing, but it’s a sweet friendship cast with foreboding, signalled by the mysterious presence of a pregnant artist and a carefully composed backdrop of stark isolation. Styled and paced like the European auteur cinema of the 1960s (esp. “Persona”), this boldly realised work achieves a comparable level of artful majesty.

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