364 - 3 Women, United States, 1977. Dir. Robert Altman.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

364 - 3 Women, United States, 1977.  Dir. Robert Altman.

Pinky Rose's life is going Willie-Millie.

She has made a new best friend at the Desert Springs senior spa.

And she keeps running into a mysterious woman painting strange murals on pavement and in swimming pools.

Millie is her new workmate and roommate.  All the men want her and all the women want to be her.

Well, actually, the men take her for granted and the women ignore her.

Edgar, Willie's husband, is willing to have her, but Tom always seems to have a cough when she is around.

But Pinky wants to be her.  In fact, Pinky wants to be Millie really, really badly.

She tells her, "You're the most perfect person I ever met."

Then she clocks in using Millie's time card, and she submits Millie's Social Security number as her own.  She wears her robe.  She takes over her diary.

How convenient that they both have large, penetrating eyes, are both really named Mildred, and both come from Texas.

Pinky Rose is the female Tom Ripley.

3 Women is Robert Altman's Persona.  And another prototype for David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.

Pinky spends the first part of the movie idolizing Millie and wanting to be her.

Then the crisis happens.  The death.  The rebirth.  The transformation.  The stillbirth.  The identity theft.  So much of it in the water.  Under water.  Through the water.  The spa.  The aquarium.  The swimming pool.  The undulating waves.

And those double reflections in the mirrors and the windowpanes.

And the twins.

Doppelganger.
Trebleganger.
Verdreifachenganger.

3 Women.
Three Sisters.
Three Fates.
The Moirai.  Clotho.  Lachesis.  Atropos.

The child is the mother of the woman.

The mother-daughter.  The grandmother-daughter-granddaughter.

If you are looking for Edgar, you might just find him underneath that pile of tires.

(Fried Green Tomatoes?)

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