Teenagers Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb share a dangerous sexual bond and an amoral outlook on life. They spend afternoons breaking into storefronts and engaging in petty crimes, until the calculating Nathan ups the ante by kidnapping, and murdering, a young boy.
USA
USA
The thing about making the story of Leopold and Loeb a queer story is that there is a strong temptation to make their queerness as the source of their villainy, when it's the privilege and power they grew up with that instilled in them the arrogant belief they were ubermensch. (Some asshole is going to come along and claim that this is a misunderstanding of Nietsche, to which I have to respond: I don't care. And anyway, it would be Leopold and Loeb's understanding. But let me stress that the primary answer to your assertion is "I don't care.")
Anyway. When you criminalized a sexuality, you shove those who are part of that identity outside the law. There is, therefore,…
the twinks were bad at murder in this one but at least they actually kiss on screen
Tom Kalin’s Swoon is a stylized black and white reference of the murder of 14 year old Bobby Franks and one of the most controversial trials of the jazz age. A provocative film included in the New Queer Cinema movement of the 90’s more interested in differentiating the homosexual relationship between Leopold and Leob from then so called insanity than criminal tension or morality. Disputing the narrative that was viewed in the case back when it happened reflecting a modern perspective of they happened to be gay killers not killers because they were gay. The most successful part in my opinion is the choice to appear aesthetically to the period of mixing of the archival footage and striking contrasting monochromatic…
They both claimed to have abandoned Judaism, but then they packed deli sandwiches for their murder-kidnapping spree so idk.
Leopold & Loeb were pretty fucking dumb tbh
Leopold & Loeb movie marathon, movie number 3.
Ooohhhh yeah, this is the sexy one of the bunch. It’s also the most overtly gay one too, none of this subtext coded type stuff in Rope and Compulsion, these boys get it on, and it’s pretty disturbingly sexy. Loved the cinematography and overall aesthetic. Super cool.
“If I do what you want.”
“... I’ll do what you want.”
I've been wanting to see this film for awhile. It is a part of New Queer Cinema. But it was literally so uninteresting and the filmmaking looked hideous. I'm pretty sure a person with no filmmaking experience, but with a good eye could have made a better looking film than this.
I just knew that in the first 10 minutes this film was not going to be the film for me. But I don't like not finishing films.
This film just proves that directors are really important and how they can change the overall outcome of a film. Rope and Funny Games are films based on the same killers, but done WAY better. This film is horrible.
Supremely arty take on the Leopold and Loeb case that feels as indebted to Genet as it does In Cold Blood. Kalin got his start producing videos for ACT UP, and Gran Fury's agit-pop art aesthetic is all over this, wrapping his very analytical film in the sort of cooly seductive look that his Loeb gives Leopold. Some really gorgeous work by Ellen Kuras here, too. Would really love to see this in a theater (or at least in HD).
Killing baby Frank together would join Richard and I for life. I wanted to murder the idea of suffering as my condition. I wanted to surpass the boundaries of intelligence for something more pure.
gay boys in love can be a real dangerous thing!
A reminder that queerness, much like criminality, is not an identity but a course of action in opposition to society and the state. A reminder that to be queer is to be criminal, to be criminal is to be queer. A reminder that the only way to strengthen the connections we have with one another is to resist the world together.
A reminder that the figure of the child is one of restraint and oppression, that…
Once upon a time the Sundance Film Festival championed unique and challenging films that would never have found an audience outside the festival circuit, let alone found their way to a wide VHS distribution. I guess it's a bit of poetic irony that director Tom Kalin and his impressive debut, Swoon, have been lost in the circuits of time.
Swoon is a telling of the infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case, shot in a dreamy black-and-white. The film has all the underpinnings of the stereotypical, pretentious student films that have been lampooned for decades. The difference is that Swoon is actually great.
The story is obviously a juicy bit of what could be tabloid trash. But Kalin's visuals are never anything less…
OH FUCK YEAH
Really wanted to like this more because it tackles upfront the queerness of the story. And as interesting as the approach is, I also found it a little hard to follow. I even had difficulty telling the actors and their characters apart. Don't know if that's intentional or not, supposed to mean something deeper. The main reason I followed along was because I'd seen 1959s Compulsion.
