Elvira also freezes
Another thought: has anyone with this problem tried backing up their save file to a thumb drive or whatever and then deleting it from the PS3? It's crashing right where it would try to save, it sounds like, so maybe your saves have some configuration that triggers this problem when it tries to save on those particular tables.
If we could find a save file that triggered it, we could send that file to FarSight so they could finally debug the problem--they haven't been able to get it to happen on their end so far.