Maria Cardenal (Assumpta Serna) is a villainess from the 1986 Spanish movie Matador.
Maria is a lawyer by profession, but also a sadist who gets turned on by killing people and by death in general. A big part of the story focuses on her relationship with a former matador called Diego, who like her is also a sadistic killer fascinated by death.
Maria is responsible for the deaths of two men, and the police are investigating them. Her method of killing them is during sex, she removes a sharp hair pin from her hair and then stabs it into the necks of the men.
There are various points through the movie where she shows that she enjoys death. One where she walks into a cinema because she thinks she's being followed, only to end up stopping and watching the movie being shown because people are getting shot in it. Another is when she's standing on a bridge with Diego, she tells him she comes here often ever since she saw someone commit suicide there. Lastly where she is listening to a client describe murders he committed to her (he actually didn't commit them but is some kind of psychic and pictured them so well that he thought he had killed them, he was seeing both Maria and Diego's kills). He describes strangling a girl, and Maria really enjoys hearing it and asks about another victim.
Ultimately she and Diego become obsessed with each other after finding out about the other's love of killing. The police eventually discover that Maria and Diego are responsible for the murders and try to track them down. During this Maria and Diego are having sex and have decided to kill each other for one last pleasure. Maria stabs Diego in his neck and then as he's dying tells him to watch her face as she dies as well. She grabs a pistol, puts it in her mouth and shoots herself. The police arrive and find the two lovers dead.
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