Film Review: the real-life story of The Tinder Swindler grips and unsettles
The Tinder Swindler tells the jaw-dropping story of a prolific conman who posed as a billionaire playboy on Tinder, and the women who set out to bring him down.
★★★★☆
(15A) is a fascinating film on a number of levels, and not least in its depiction of how ‘just one little swipe can change your life'.
A documentary by Felicity Morris, it revolves around Simon Leviev (real name Shimon Hayut), a conman who weaves elaborate stories to persuade women to give him their money. The story is told, however, by three women — Cecilie Fjellhoy, Pernilla Sjoholm and Ayleen Charlotte — who were lured into loaning Leviev hundreds of thousands of dollars after swiping right on his Tinder profile.
Told via reconstructions, face-to-face interviews and camera phone footage, the film documents a world of scarcely believable privilege and wealth: on her first date with Leviev, for example, Cecilie found herself being whisked from London to Budapest on a private jet, whereupon she was wined and dined and showered with gifts, and later learned that Simon Leviev was ‘the Prince of Diamonds’ — his father, he told the women, was Lev Leviev, the Israeli ‘King of Diamonds’.
All good, clean fun, of course, until Simon begins getting death threats, and is forced to ask Cecilie to take out a loan to fund his brief disappearance from public view.
Gripping and unsettling, is as full of shocking twists as any fictional con artist flick.
(Netflix)
