Silvia Pinal may be the shining star of Tulio Demicheli’s Locura pasional (US: Passionate Madness) as the beautiful, innocent stage performer Mabel, but it’s Carlos López Moctezuma who performs the complex emotional breakdown as her bitterly jealous and mentally wrecked husband, the wealthy engineer Alberto Morales, who murders Mabel upon suspicion of infidelity. Based on “The Kreutzer Sonata,” an 1889 novella by Leo Tolstoy, most of the film comprises Morales’ extended flashback of the drama that led up to his ruthless act, including one scene in which he almost drowns Mabel on a fishing trip but changes his mind at the last second. Cuban actor César del Campo plays the handsome Luis, the theater director whose bond with Mabel stirs up Morales’ suspicion, rage, and ultimate downfall (an extremely sexy scene between the two during a rainstorm is conjured entirely inside Morales’ head). The film depicts both the couple’s courtship and marriage and Morales’ emotional unraveling, culminating in a gorgeously rendered final confrontation in which Demicheli creates a full sensory experience (a mother sleeping, a quiet living room, a subtle yet endless faucet leak, a distant female voice singing a ballad). In fact, despite relatively few scenes of action and/or suspense, Demicheli and cinematographer Torres intensify key moments through expressionist lighting and inventive camera placement (peering through a toppled lamp shade, from behind a staircase, from overhead as Morales paces back and forth in torment, from behind a roaring fireplace).