3 Women is a 1977 American psychological drama film written, produced and directed by Robert Altman and starring Shelley Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Janice Rule.

3 Women premiered at the 1977 Cannes Film Festival and earned positive reviews from critics, who particularly praised the performances of the cast (especially Duvall's).

Pinky Rose, a timid and awkward young woman, starts working at a health spa for the elderly in a small California desert town.

Despite their stark personality differences, Pinky and Millie become roommates at the Purple Sage Apartments, owned by a drinking, womanizing, has-been Hollywood stunt double Edgar Hart and his wife Willie, a mysterious pregnant woman who rarely speaks and paints striking and unsettling murals.

Millie, angry at what she perceives as Pinky's meddling and sabotaging her social life, yells at her and suggests she move out of the apartment.

Edgar, soused again, enters their apartment and makes sexual overtures before casually telling them that Willie is about to give birth.

[8] The setting is also a key feature in the film, with Joe McElhaney arguing the California landscapes "come to represent something much larger than a 'mere' location".

[11] During a restless sleep, he had a dream in which he was directing a film starring Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek in an identity theft story, against a desert backdrop.

Altman consulted author Patricia Resnick to develop a treatment, drawing up 50 pages, initially with no intent to write a full screenplay.

[13] Altman secured approval from 20th Century Fox, which supported the project on the basis of the success of his 1970 film MASH.

However, Altman stated he "loved" the accident, and had Duvall intentionally catch her dress and skirt in the door in several scenes.

[25] Ebert added 3 Women to his Great Movies list in 2004, deeming it "Robert Altman's 1977 masterpiece" and calling Duvall's expressions "a study in unease".

[13] Vincent Canby, writing for The New York Times, called 3 Women a "funny, moving" film, and Millie "one of the most memorable characterizations Mr. Altman has ever given us," giving credit to Duvall as well.

[20] Writing for The New Yorker, Michael Sragow remarked "In the Robert Altman canon, no picture is stranger—and more fascinating—than this 1977 phantasmagoria," adding it is "full of images so rich that they transcend its metaphoric structure," praising Duvall.

[26] Molly Haskell, in New York, ranked the film as the second best of the year, describing it as "ambitious, pretentious, gentle, goofy and mesmerizing".

[29] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times wrote, "It needed no proving, but on the evidence of his '3 Women,' Robert Altman is identifiable anew as one of the most fluent, imaginative, individual and magical film-makers working here or anywhere else.