This film is the most homo-erotic version of the Leopold/Loeb case, a true story of gay lovers Richard Loeb (Daniel Schlachet) and Nathan Leopold Jr. (Craig Chester), who kidnapped and murdered a child in the early 1920s for kicks. Why did the two well-off 18-year-olds kill a 13 year-old boy by the name of Bobby Franks? "Swoon" answers that question in detail, using a style that is impressive but brings little emotion to the film's story. Shot in black and white, with some narration in the sequence of events, the movie provides us a look at the duo that is intriguing, but is tedious and dismal for some viewers. It starts out with a surrealistic reading of Leopold van Sacher-Masoch's "Venus in Furs." This sets the tone for the rest of the film. Told first through the journal entries of the two main characters and then with narration, "Swoon" presents the story of the murderers in a way that is accurate and cinematic. The film shows the relationship of Loeb and Leopold, whose sexual relationship serves as the drive for their crimes against others. Their murder of the Franks child was little more than a promise kept by Loeb to Leopold. In one scene, Leopold tells a psychiatrist of a slave/master fantasy, which describes his relationship with Loeb, who is a calculating intellectual. Leopold , an amateur ornithologist, is the emotional and weak one. In love with Loeb, Leopold is willing to do anything for him, and when Leob withholds sex, Leopold is even willing to commit murder to have sex. "Swoon" lacks energy. In the second half of the film, after their arrest and imprisonment, the movie loses what momentum it had and becomes somewhat boring. Leopold and Loebe escape execution due to a lack of understanding of homosexuality. They were declared mentally deficient according to phrenology and old Freudian neurosis theories. If the establishment of the 1920's understood homosexuality, Leopold and Loeb would surely have hanged, for they were certainly guilty. Scripted by Hilton Als and Tom Kalin, who also directed.
