Deep Crimson

This version of the true story that inspired Leonard Kastle's The Honeymoon Killers (1969) is set in Mexico in 1949. Black comedy informs both films, but where Kastle's was notable for its grim austerity, Ripstein opts for a sumptuous yet strangely detached variation on the traditional Mexican melodrama. For all their protestations of undying love, Coral (Orozco) and Nicolás (Giménez Cacho) are hardly the most sympathetic of protagonists. Besides murdering a series of widows, Coral, an obese, slatternly, Charles Boyer-obsessed nurse, dumps her kids at the first opportunity, while her beloved Nicolás is a deceitful gigolo con-man. The sickly, overheated emotions are reflected in the ornate, even gaudy decor and lighting, while Ripstein's grasp of the couple's cowardice and cruelty and of the social, sexual and psychological circumstances which render their victims gullible and vulnerable is evident both in his matter-of-fact depiction of the killings, and in the subtly ironic tone of the dialogue and performances. Imagine late Fassbinder filtered through a Latin sensibility and you're only halfway there.