Deep Crimson

The best Mexican cinema has its roots firmly planted in popular genres… "Deep Crimson" is a crime film, based on the real exploits of the so-called Lonely Hearts Club killers in the post-war United States…

Nicolás and Colar are a grotesque version of Bonnie and Clyde, who rob not banks but vulnerable rich women…Nicolás is a middle-aged man of abundant charm with an unconvincing wig, who appeals to the snobbery of elderly widows by his ability to pose as a Spaniard, affecting the accent and mannerisms of the expatriate… Coral is an overweight single mother who drives her children and takes off with Nicolás, pushing him from robbery to murder…

Though money is the apparent motive, Coral is addicted to romance, as we see in the first shot of her bedroom, stuffed with cheap but gaudy clothes, Mills & Boon-type novels, and photographs of film stars… The killings the pairs commit are dictated by Coral's passion for Nicolás… He seduces women in order to steal them, and this incurs Coral's murderous jealousy…

Arturo Ripstein's film is essentially a study of thwarted passion turning repugnant… Coral is vicious, even to the extent of killing a young girl who has witnessed her mother's murder… Yet her gesture of offering her own hair to make Nicolás a new wig is at once tender and ridiculous