Plot points are linear links that make up the chain of traditional Aristotelian 3-act dramatic structure. This classic structure worked well in Hollywood for almost a century now. Although young movie makers are forcing the limits of this structure, plot points still rule the day as the tent poles that hold up of the circus of our dreams. Here are plot points of Deep Crimson (1996), as I see them.

Deep Crimson (1996)

Starring: Daniel Gimenez Cacho, Regina Orozco
Directed by: Arturo Ripstein
Writer: Paz Alicia Garciadiego

PROTAGONIST CORAL'S DILEMMA: She makes a pact with the devil just for love and sex with the handsome Nicolas. She'd rather give her own children away and kill other women than face a lonely life on her own.

PROTAGONIST'S DESIRE: To find the man of her dreams and claim him her own.

PROTAGONIST'S OBSTACLE: She has to share her lover with other women that she hates in order to be able to live together with him.

ESTABLISHING SHOT: A messy lower-class bedroom decorated with photos of movie stars. The overweight and horny Coral, who is a nurse and a mortician's helper, reads a paperback in bed.

INCITING INCIDENT: Coral meets gigolo Nicolas through a personal ad.

PLOT POINT 1: Coral, who gives away her children just to be with Nicolas, discovers that Nicolas is not a sincere lover but a gigolo who skims lonely women like herself.

MID POINT EVENT: Coral and Nicolas, now working together posing as brother and sister, meet a lonely widow at a bar in the boondocks. Jealous Coral kills the widow by mixing rat poison into her drink.

PLOT POINT 2: Nicolas and Coral visit the third widow who answer Nicolas's personal ad. Nicolas stabs the young widow to death after getting her pregnant.

3rd ACT RESOLUTION: Nicolas and Coral turn themselves in but the cops take them out to a desolate country road and shoot them both.