Why is it that the poets of cinema are so drawn to stories of murders in love on the run? Is it the open road or the poetry of blood? Is it a harbored desire to be devil may care runaways themselves? This may or may not be the case with Malick’s BADLANDS (who watches from afar with delicate eyes) yet I’m certain Arturo Ripstein truly believes in the relationship between the carnality of homicide and the anarchy of love. It’s my own interpretation but I think he would secretly want this in some dark corner of his mind.

Perhaps this is why he tells the story with such great cinematic narrative. What better reason? His camera never dares sit still, so when it moves, it moves slowly. It takes it’s time to take to take us from image to image, chronicling each encounter, until the titled destiny arrives like a fairy tale godmother.

The connection with DEEP CRIMSON and a Grimm fairy tale may only be because Ripstein’s name reminds me of a gothic creature of some sort and that’s as great a compliment as I could give a filmmaker of this sort. He’s on par with an Lynch or an Altman, or in other words, a filmmaker with a curious tone that makes you question where the line is drawn between the filmmakers’ artistic musings and their own true desires.