Following Alfred Hitchock’s Rope and Richard Fleischer’s Compulsion, Swoon is the third major film inspired by the kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Bobby Franks by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, a real-life duo caught in a sadomasochistic relationship and out to prove to each other their own cunning. But Tom Kalin’s masterful debut film is also the first to explicitly address the killers’ gay love affair, and his atmospheric, eerily restrained treatment of this sensational material remains a milestone of New Queer Cinema 20 years later.
This presentation is in association with FilmBuff.