Shelley Duvall
Tribute
Robert Altman’s THREE WOMEN
Sunday, August 4 at 2pm
$16 Public | $10 Members
The amazing Shelley Duvall won Best Actress at both the
Cannes Film Festival and the Los Angeles Film Critics Association for her
brilliant performance in Three Women, which many consider the best of
her long career. Robert 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 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 Sissy Spacek. Altman’s mesmerizing vision,
inspired by a dream (and reminiscent of Bergman’s Persona in its
depiction of women’s lives doubling and taking on one another’s traits), is a
singular mix of otherworldly and earthy thanks to the intensely grounding
performances of his stars, especially Duvall. (USA, 1977, 124 min., color,
DCP / Also starring Janice Rule)
