The clashing of femininity in Robert Altman's '3 Women' (2025)

While some directors prefer to operate in a realm of reality that reflects our waking lives, there are some who choose to create worlds that are most similar to the ones we drift to when asleep, creating strange works that aim to comfort audiences through subject matter that is disturbing, appealing to the depths of our subconscious and the hazy stories that fill our minds at night. Whether it be Mulholland Drive or Wild Strawberries, many films have been defined by a dream-like quality that lulls audiences into a state of resigned blissfulness and discomfort, with a distorted level of reality that both reflects and clashes with our everyday experiences.

Regardless of how powerless we might be in these dream scenarios, there is something soothing about how these stories wash over you, unaware of their true meaning but nevertheless finding solace in the unknowable nature of these unconscious mysteries because it’s just a dream. It isn’t as easy to find peace in our lack of certainty, and this is something that Robert Altman used to his advantage in his mysterious masterpiece, 3 Women.

Directed in 1977, 3 Women follows two co-workers who move in together, with both women developing a strange relationship as their lives and personalities slowly merge. Starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in the lead roles, the film is one of the most enigmatic and evasive from Altman’s body of work, with the director’s signature style being warped to reflect the magical realism of a dream. While nothing in the movie is entirely out of the ordinary, he twists certain details to disturb an otherwise seamless and perfect word, leaving the audience feeling unsettled by moments that are strange enough to be noticed but not pointed enough to hold obvious meaning.

The film begins with Spacek’s character, Mildred, starting a new job at a spa. Altman sets the story in a lonely desert town that is covered in orange dust, with a haunting presence that feels somewhat primal and uninviting. The spa is drenched in an overwhelming mood of hostility, creating a cult-like and clinical feeling as the other women glare at Mildred. It is because of this that the presence of Milly (played by Duvall) is so intensely jarring, with the character talking at a rapid pace as she offers her words of wisdom to Mildred.

The other women are equally as unkind towards Milly, and we get the sense that she is barely tolerated by them. She tries to make conversation with the men at work and in the local area but is cruelly ignored and treated as being invisible, only making her come across as more desperate for attention and disturbing her presentation of normality. But Mildred appears to be completely unperturbed by this notable strangeness, quickly becoming enamoured by her larger-than-life persona and effortless beauty, accepting Milly’s sudden offer to move in with her.

Despite having an aura of vague normality, Altman distorts this illusion through a foreboding tonal undercurrent and heightened colour palette, making the audience feel as though something deeply wrong is afoot despite bearing no obvious threat. The desert town in which they live feels uninhabitable and painfully quiet, with the pair visiting a desolate local bar that feels closer to a movie set. Milly’s apartment is decorated in a slightly sickening and exaggerated way, with yellow rooms and a purple tint to the walls of her building that makes it look like a cartoonish copy of a real home.

Everything is presented immaculately, with Milly priding herself on her well-kept home and beauty rituals, obsessed with a presentation of hyper-femininity. While Mildred is besotted by her new roommate, the pair slowly begin to clash over her obsession with Milly, with the pair eventually blurring into the same person as they adopt each other’s mannerisms as a result of their jealous competition with each other.

While the meaning of 3 Women is intentionally ambiguous, Altman creates a clear undercurrent of tension that is expressed through the visual language and presentation of this world, playing on the idea that the presentation and appearance of these women are the basis of the film’s fundamental conflict. Both women are obsessed with their presentation of femininity, with Milly’s lavish apartment and delusional sense of popularity and sexual power reflecting her deep-rooted obsession with her image and attempt to control how she is perceived. However, she goes too far with her own presentation of femininity in a desperate attempt to be liked, to the point where it becomes extremely grating, existing as a fantasy of herself that is only exposed when living with another person.

Through her initial jealousy of Milly, Mildred slowly attempts to adopt the same characteristics as Milly, believing her presentation of popularity to be true and trying to steal this power for herself. But as she copies her mannerisms and way of dressing, Milly’s facade is threatened, and she lashes out at Mildred, culminating in one scene where her adoring roommate hurls herself off the balcony and into the swimming pool, leading to a head injury that puts her into a coma.

Altman said the swimming pool reflected the embryotic nature of the womb, alluding to ideas of rebirth, fluidity and transformation. This is the space where both women finally merge together – two becomes one and after Mildred wakes from her coma, she uses Milly’s guilt over the situation to completely steal her identity, slowly adopting each aspect of her personality until Milly is entirely obsolete, existing as an empty vessel of the hyper-feminine identity she once prided herself on.

Towards the film’s final scene, the two women slowly absorb another woman, Willie, with the three women merging to create one amorphous blob that encompasses all the prescribed definitions of femininity. Mildred is innocent and naive, Milly is more sexually experienced and mature, and the final woman, Willie, is married to an unfaithful man and pregnant with her first child, first seen while painting a mysterious mural on the walls of an empty swimming pool, decorating a hollow space with images that no-one will see.

Together, they represent three different stages in a woman’s life, flowing together to create a fluid amalgamation of womanhood and the struggles that come with it. Altman’s dream-like film is a dark nightmare about femininity and identity, with each woman becoming intangible and unknowable through their attempts to conform to an idea of womanhood that has been bestowed upon them, melting into one person through an endless performance that drains them of completeness, leaving nothing but an empty swimming pool.

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