“3 Women has a brilliantly realized sense of place. It also has a compelling dramatic premise and two sharply drawn characters--Millie Lammoreaux (Shelley Duvall), a frivolous Cosmo girl, and Pinky Rose (beautifully played by Sissy Spacek), a small-town hick who comes under her spell. As Millie, Shelley Duvall gives a sublime performance and creates the most memorable character in any movie of recent months. To say that she creates the character is not in this case an overstatement; she reportedly wrote much of her own dialogue and based the character on her own observations and experiences growing up in Texas.
“Shelley Duvall has previously been most effective as the frail country waif in Thieves Like Us and as the frighteningly sophisticated L.A. groupie in Nashville. In 3 Women she combines those two characters. Obsessed with color schemes and recipes, dates and swimming parties, Millie embraces all the shallow values of the American suburban high school; her dreams have been formed by TV commercials and women's magazines. Ironically, Millie is a horrendous failure in the tacky world she reverses [sic]; while she struts and preens and flirts like Lady Clairol, her "friends" either ignore her or mock her right within earshot. One might see Millie as a sad, deluded figure, except that she is too indefatigable to be pathetic. Since she has absolutely no self-pity, it would be presumptuous to pity her. In her stubborn adherence to her own distorted view of the world, she's as comically single-minded as a character from Dickens, and she's so totally oblivious to other people's rejections that one cannot help marveling at her resilience….”
Stephen Farber
New West, May 9, 1977
(Get Spacek)
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