Film: With this ring (of crime) I do thee wed

Set in 1949, Arturo Ripstein's Mexican version of The Honeymoon Killers stars Regina Orozco as Coral, a fat, single mother who answers an advertisement in the lonely hearts and meets up with the courtly Nicolas (Daniel Gimenez Cacho), a rug-wearing conman. Undeterred by his penchant for seducing, robbing and murdering lonely women, the besotted Coral abandons her children to become his partner in bed and "business".

Played out with sombre deliberation against a backdrop of seedy, sepia- tinted poverty, Deep Crimson is a quietly compelling anatomy of violent amour fou. Describing how amoral passion can turn ordinary people into monsters, Ripstein coolly clocks the grotesquery of his characters, but never allows them to become inhuman. Instead, he peppers their sedately paced serial-killing spree with moments of tenderness and vulnerability. Begun by blackmail and cemented by murder, their baleful romance is enriched further by a script full of mordant humour. "You look bigger than your photograph," whimpers one future victim when her suitor's "sister" looms large in the doorway. "I've always looked bigger," snaps back Coral, who, while she may be a stuffed sofa of psychotic jealousy, still smarts when people comment on her weight.