Swoon

Kalin... infuses the story with high visual style; his spare graphic framings and joltingly oblique angles both embody the past in heightened detail and conjure the killers' recklessly aestheticizing mind-set.

Swoon is too pleased with its own amoral pose; but Kalin has the same alarming assurance as his heroes, whose story has, if anything, grown in its power to shock.

An impressive debut feature from the young, independent American film-maker Tom Kalin.

Swoon goes much deeper than the other studies of the Frank case, because it tries to show exactly how the psychosexual balance between the two killers made a murder possible, when neither Leopold nor Loeb could possibly have killed by himself.

An exotic mood piece, based on the infamous Leopold-Loeb case, that probably didn't win director Tom Kalin many friends in the gay community.

As a dark, moody and stylized (the film is shot in b/w) poem of love and madness Swoon is effective, but as social polemic on contemporary gay issues, it's strained; even so, it's a striking feature debut.

Faux artsy take on the Leopold-Loeb case.