Shelley Duvall embodies a character so fantastically and devastatingly original you can't take your eyes off her. She drives this film through the dreamy abstract scenes and the foreboding soundtrack in a yellow Pinto with her (yellow) dress always stuck in the door.
Robert Altman is a director well-known for encouraging his actors to help to create the characters they will inhabit onscreen. Millie is a recognizable person, and so we respond to her - yet there is something otherworldy there as well, and this facet must come straight from Duvall. This otherworldliness I found deeply affecting, because she is such a complete misfit wherever she is. I think she looks quite beautiful with her huge eyes and her toothbrush-teased shiny hair. She is a head above the other young women she works with at the health spa as she walks behind them, chattering inanely. She is thoroughly deluded when she is at the pool in her apartment complex or the hospital where she lunches, flirting with the men - imagining she is popular and desirable. I couldn't find a hint of falseness in this portrayal, and when Duvall's Millie lets fly at Pinkie towards the end with one of the most amazing slaps I've ever seen in a movie, it is a completely organic, cathartic reflex that comes directly from Millie. Altman deserves a lot of credit for injecting so much affectionate humour into these scenes of Millie awkwardly/confidently interacting with her world.
Sissy Spacek is well cast, too, as the childlike Pinkie. She plays off Duvall really beautifully, and her impish grin and curious expression when she observes Millie early in the film is priceless. Her transformation later really shows off this amazing actor's range.
Seasoned performer Janice Rule (she was a Hollywood contract player from the early 50's and in the original Broadway cast of Picnic) is Willy, a character who is really only a sketch. We can only guess at her motivation, but Rule fills things in as much as possible with some nice subtle details.
Altman's screenplay turns to the dark and abstract late in the film, and this would be unforgivable in a lesser film, but it is a mercifully short passage and at this stage he has built up so much good will for the characters that it is more than tolerable.
