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.

The infamous Leopold-Loeb murder case has been the inspiration for two previous screen versions - Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and Richard Fliescher's Compulsion - but these movies, unlike Swoon, avoided the (homo)sexual elements in the drama. "Tom Kalin's stunning monochrome melodrama - part archival footage, part period drama, part experimental narrative - puts the homosexuality back into the homicide." Sixth London Lesbian & Gay Festival.