DEEP CRIMSON (72)

Directed by: Arturo Ripstein

Starring: Regina Orozco, Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Marisa Paredes

The Pitch: In 1940s Mexico, the passionate love between a corpulent, mentally-unstable nurse and a shabby gigolo who marries women for their money results in a trail of murders.

Theo Sez: THE HONEYMOON KILLERS re-imagined as a cool, creepily impassive bad dream, shot entirely in dank shades of brown (the title is presumably a joke on our lurid expectations). Unlike KILLERS - which gave the murderous couple a counter-cultural dimension, contrasting them with the squarely suburban lives of their (conspicuously religious and/or patriotic) victims - this has no problem making its killers rather useless and pathetic, especially as the victims become progressively more likeable : it's a very deliberate descent into evil, with even the landscape gradually becoming more primitive (as in an Anthony Mann Western) to reflect the protagonists' growing alienation - they're initially so "civilised" they're worried about meeting a prospective victim at a remote location, but, by the time of the last murder, they've withdrawn to a place so isolated the local police don't even have prison cells. The film (also unlike KILLERS) purposely elides explicit motivation and moment-by-moment plausibility (example : our hero sneaks out of bed in the middle of the night to fleece the woman he's sleeping with - only it's done without a cut, so that he gets up, absurdly enough, just a few seconds after saying goodnight) ; it moves with a kind of dream-logic, so you always feel you're a step behind, just catching up to it - a constant, highly effective sense of dislocation. It's a little repetitive, but its hangdog moodiness is hypnotic - and, technically speaking, it's superbly done : we dolly in on an old woman praying, pan discreetly up a little as she's suddenly clubbed to death (with a statue of Jesus!), track away briefly with the murderess, then return to the old woman lying in a pool of blood with the smashed statue beside her - all in the same, meticulously prepared shot. Not exactly pleasant perhaps, but weirdly compelling.