In 2019, Norwegian newspaper VG published an article titled “The Tinder Swindler,” which sent shockwaves through the general public on par with The Atlantic’s “The Truth About Dentistry,” or the New York Times’ “Who is the Bad Art Friend?” The article follows a man named Shimon Hayut who spent years of his life posing as Simon Leviev, the heir to a behemoth Israeli diamond fortune. He adopted this persona to court women on Tinder and, once he has earned their trust, to trick them into loaning him hundreds of thousands of dollars—money he would then use to woo his next victim. As is the case with most popular IP, “The Tinder Swindler” was picked up for adaptation at lightning speed, and developed into a documentary by the masterminds behind Netflix’s Don’t Fuck with Cats, the deep-dive miniseries into the stranger-than-fiction story of the rise-and-fall of a porn-star-turned-cat-torturer-and-maybe-cannibal. Directed by Felicity Morris, The Tinder Swindler is not dissimilar to Don’t Fuck with Cats in that it is delightfully high-concept, bringing with it a similar frenetic energy and playful teasing out of twists.
But The Tinder Swindler inherently has one obstacle to overcome that Cats didn’t: It has big shoes to fill. The article it is based on is exceptional and engrossing. Hayut is a mastermind criminal, and his story is true crime at its best. The source piece defies conventional reporting standards, tacking on WhatsApp screen recordings, iPhone videos of private jet rides, and voice messages—almost like a mini documentary in its own right. How do you make a good documentary out of source material that already seems to have nailed it?
That’s a big question, and it’s one that The Tinder Swindler might just have the answer for. The film starts with an interview with a Norwegian woman named Cecilie, who is one of the victims that reported Hayut for fraud. She’s effortlessly likable: She explains how Beauty and the Beast shaped her romantic expectations as a kid and is self-deprecating about her failed attempts to find love on Tinder. Morris tells the story of Hayut’s crimes and deception from the perspective of three of his victims, transforming the unraveling of an epic crime (which is what the article covers) to what the story really is: Emotional warfare. The Tinder Swindler doesn’t attempt to follow the strict reporting edge of the article. To strengthen the sentimental angle, Morris does all of this without opening up the film to the perspective of outsiders, or adding in more than a couple of objective news clippings. Documentary lends itself well to evoking empathy and emotionality, and this Morris’ directorial debut leans into that notion.