Belgian horror monger Fabrice Du Welz (Calvaire) takes a crack at Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, the notorious “Lonely Hearts Killers,” whose serial murders of lovelorn women in the late 1940s have been immortalized on film numerous times already (most notably in Leonard Kastle’s seedy 1969 shocker The Honeymoon Killers). The product of a Jesuit education, Du Welz adds a thick layer of religiosity to the tale, naming the Beck character “Gloria” and having the duo (Lola Dueñas and Laurent Lucas) pose as Catholic missionaries for one of their homicidal scams. This approach doesn’t add much apart from the usual glib irony, but Dueñas rescues the project with her feverish performance, the character’s sexual hunger generating a whirlpool of gore and perversion. In French with subtitles.
Alleluia
1 hour 33 min • 2014
