Crew
Director – Arturo Ripstein, Screenplay – Paz Alicia Garciadiego, Producers – Pablo Barbachgano & Miguel Necoechea, Photography – Guillermo Granillo, Music – David Mansfield. Production Company – Instituto Mexicano de Cinematografica/Ivania Films/MK2 Productions/Wanda Films/Fondo de Fomento a la Calidad Cinematografica Gobierno del Estado de Sonora/Television Espanola/Les Productions Traversiere.
Cast
Regina Orozco (Coral Fabre), Daniel Gimenez Cacho (Nicolas Estrella), Marisa Paredes (Irene Gallardo), Julieta Egurolla (Juanita Norton), Veronica Merchant (Rebecca Sanpedro), Rosa Furman (Sara Silberman), Sherilyn Gonzalez (Teresa), Giovanni Florido (Carlitos), Bianca Florido (Mercedes Sanpedro)
Plot
Mexico, the 1950s. Coral Fabre, a full-figured mother of two working as a nurse, answers a lonely-hearts ad from Nicolas Estrella, who claims to be Spanish. After spending the night together, she turns up on his doorstep with her two children. He says he cannot possibly have her with the children and so she abandons them at an orphanage and returns to him. He protests but she has gone through his things and discovered that he runs a lonely-hearts scam where he seduces widows and unmarried women and steals their money. She agrees to go along with this. The two travel to meet his prospective matches, where she pretends to be his sister. However, Coral’s jealousy at seeing Nicolas with the other women becomes too much and she murders them.
Deep Crimson is based on the true-life story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez. In 1947, Raymond Fernandez, a man from New York City who was born of Spanish parents, and Martha Beck, an overweight undertaker’s assistant from Florida, met up via the personals column in the newspaper where she became enamoured of him. After discovering his confidence scheme where he would meet women via the personals ads and trick them out of money, they collaborated and would travel around the country to meet his matches. However, Martha was extremely jealous and began to murder the women. In 1949, they were arrested and charged with the murders of three of the women. The two were executed at Sing Sing prison by electric chair in 1951.
The notoriety was such that the Lonely Hearts murders have inspired five films. Deep Crimson was the third film based on Beck-Fernandez killings. The first was the classic The Honeymoon Killers (1970) starring Shirley Stohler in a terrifying performance as Martha Beck and Tony Lo Bianco as Raymond Fernandez. Next there was Lonely Hearts (1991) starring Eric Roberts and Beverly D’Angelo as Fernandez and Beck; and subsequent to this Lonely Hearts (2006) with Jared Leto and Salma Hayek filling the respective roles, and Alleluia (2014), a modernised version of the story from Belgian director Fabrice Du Welz with Laurent Lucas and Lola Dueñas in the equivalent roles.
Deep Crimson translates the basics to Sonora in Mexico, where the cultural shift works surprisingly well. All of the other tellings of the story with the exception of The Honeymoon Killers change the Martha Beck equivalent to a regular-size woman, whereas this keeps her at plus-size as the real Beck was. The plot has a general faithfulness to the details of the case – Fernandez born of Spanish parents; he hiding his bald head under a wig; Beck dumping her children at the orphanage. Although it changes other aspects such as having their deaths by a vigilante police firing squad in the desert rather than their going to the electric chair. The period is unspecified but the couple are seen driving a 1940s model Ford Super Deluxe Sedan and the clothing is conversant with that period, so you gather it is set sometime in the late 1940s/1950s.
I was quite impressed with Deep Crimson. The opening scenes get your attention – Regina Orozco tending an aging male patient and so desperate for affection she grabs his hand and places it on her breast. Her doormat personality is quite astonishing – when she turns up on Daniel Gimenez Cacho’s doorstep she offers lines like “I saw you robbing me. Maybe you were charging me for excess weight.” And after he tries to get rid of her, we see her dumping her two children at the door of an orphanage and then returning to him (all something that Martha Beck did in reality).
Like The Honeymoon Killers, Deep Crimson is set around a series of set-pieces where the couple meet the various women and then kill them. There are three such set-pieces here. Each of these is drawn out, showing the various women and their circumstances with undeniable effect. I particularly liked the scenes set in a bodega as Daniel Gimenez Cacho charms adulterous wife Julieta Egurolla and dances with her while Regina Orozco passes her a cocktail filled with rat poison and then they dump her body on a train platform. Rather amusing here is that, unlike real life, the film never has them managing to obtain any money from the women throughout.
Certainly, Regina Orozco’s performance is a very different one to Shirley Stoler’s one in The Honeymoon Killers. Stoler was all seething rage whereas Orozco is almost completely the opposite – a simpering needy doormat who follows Fernandez/Cacho around like a beagle cast in a body that is too big for itself. Both films show that the real killer in both instances was not Fernandez but Beck driven by her jealousies.
Trailer here