Deep Crimson (Profundo Carmesí) is a 1996 film from Mexico, directed by Arturo Ripstein.
Coral Fabre is a nurse and former mortuary assistant. She's a single mother to two children and she isn't very happy about it, which leaves her vulnerable to the advances of Nicolas Estrella, whom she meets through a "lonely hearts" pen pal dating service. It turns out that Nicolas is a con artist, who, after having sex with Coral, robs her of her money and takes off.
However, Coral is not your average innocent victim. She's desperately lonely, ashamed of her appearance (she's obese) and filled with bitterness and aggression. She tracks Nicolas down, kids in tow, and tells him that they're meant to be together forever. When he says the kids are a dealbreaker, she promptly abandons her children at a convent and comes back. She figures out Nicolas's scam—he routinely seduces and robs lonely women—and demands to join him as a partner in crime, posing as his sister. He agrees, and they start conning women together. Soon they escalate to murder.
Loosely based on the Real Life story of American serial killers Martha Beck and Ray Fernandez, although actually this film is a Foreign Remake of 1970 American film The Honeymoon Killers, which told the Beck/Fernandez story.
Tropes:
- Adaptational Villainy: In The Honeymoon Killers Ray is mostly just a gigolo con man who winds up being dragged into murder by Martha's violent jealousies; his only murder, the killing of Janet (corresponding to the Irene character in this film) comes after Martha flips out with jealousy and attacks Janet, ruining The Con. In this movie, Nicolas is said to have killed at least one woman in the backstory before he ever meets Coral. He agrees in advance that Coral will kill Rebeca and then, when it doesn't work, he finishes Rebeca off himself with several stab wounds to the gut. He then forces Coral to kill little Mercedes.
- Berserk Button: Nicolas's toupee, and his lack thereof. Losing it by the roadside causes him to have a hysterical breakdown. A far darker instance of this comes later when Rebeca catches him without it and giggles. This causes Nicolas to completely come unglued, flying into a violent rage and assaulting her, finally dunking her head in a barrel of waste oil. This destroys his and Rebeca's budding romance and leads directly to the violent climax.
- The Cassandra: Irene's friend Sara, who is with her when Irene meets Nicolas and Coral, sniffs them out as frauds. She asks a series of probing questions that Nicolas doesn't do a good job of answering, and she notes how odd it is when Nicolas says he's from Spain and Coral says "I am too"—they're supposedly siblings so of course they're from the same place. Unfortunately Irene, obviously desperate for a man, blows Sara off when Sara warns her that Nicolas and Coral are con artists.
- Con Man: Nicolas is a con artist who pretends to romance women before swindling them. After Coral joins him they start murdering women.
- Dating Service Disaster: Dating service disasters don't get worse than this, as every woman who writes Nicolas winds up dead.
- Death of a Child: In the most horrifying scene, after murdering Rebeca, Coral kills Rebeca's little daughter Mercedes.
- Dodgy Toupee: Nicolas is bald but wears a toupee. It's part of his con routine, but also apparently psychologically necessary. In one scene his toupee flies right off his head while he's driving the car, landing in a ditch by the road. Nicolas has a full-on meltdown and doesn't recover until Coral fashions him a new one with her own hair.
- Establishing Character Moment: Coral's first scene establishes that something is deeply wrong with her. She is administering injections to an older man (presumably a diabetic?), when she opens her blouse to him and puts his hand on her breasts. That's bad enough, but what's worse is that her two kids are home and her daughter catches her. She then angrily shoves her kids into the bathroom, goes over to the man, and starts jabbing him repeatedly in the arm with the needle. She's caught doing that by his daughter.
- Foreign Remake: Not just a retelling of the Beck/Fernandez murders, but specifically a remake of The Honeymoon Killers, with similar plot points like murdering a mother and daughter, or poisoning one victim and abandoning her at a bus station.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Coral is unable to contain her raging jealousy even when she and Nicolas are running scams. She repeatedly kills the women that Nicolas is romancing.
- Interplay of Sex and Violence: Part of Coral's deviant nature. Their first victim is dancing with Nicolas when Coral, seething with jealousy, dumps a bunch of rat poison in the woman's drink. Their victim starts gasping when the poison hits her and has to sit down—whereupon Coral starts dancing with Nicolas passionately.
- Kubrick Stare: Coral delivers a creepy one at little Mercedes, after the girl refuses a hug and runs off.
- The Load: Coral is not a very useful partner in crime. She isn't a very good liar, making mistakes that are caught out by Irene's suspicious friend Sara. Worse, she gets violently jealous and is unable to control herself, killing three separate women in unplanned jealous rages.
- Outlaw Couple: Coral and Nicolas, roaming around Mexico, romancing and murdering lonely women.
- Shout-Out: Coral is a huge fan of Charles Boyer, festooning her bedroom with Boyer photos and calling Nicolas, when she meets him, "my Chares Boyer." This may be an inside joke as Boyer, like Nicolas, was bald and needed a toupee when playing a sensuous lover.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: The first victim dies when Coral impulsively dumps a bunch of rat poison in her cocktail.
- Together in Death: The local Mexican authorities decide not to bother with any trial at all, simply taking Coral and Nicolas out in the desert to shoot them. After Coral and Nicolas are told to run for it, and right before the cops shoot them In the Back, she says "This is the happiest day of my life!" They wind up flopping over and dying together in a mud puddle.
- Very Loosely Based on a True Story: The story of the Beck/Fernandez "lonely hearts" murders, but in Mexico. In this version Coral abandons two children, which is a little more accurate than The Honeymoon Killers, which had Martha abandoning an elderly mother.
- Voiceover Letter: Nicolas is sleeping with the lovely Rebeca, but he seems to genuinely miss Coral, as she reads his voiceover letter asking her to return.
- Villain Protagonist: Two, in the persons of Coral and Nicolas the serial killers. If one judges Coral to be the sole protagonist, the trope still applies, since she's more evil and actively murderous than Nicolas.
