As the slow burn of Netflix’s latest hit, The Tinder Swindler, unfolds, viewers might initially be led to believe Felicity Morris’ documentary is nothing special. After all, the usual documentary tropes are rolled out from the start—the talking heads, the interspersal of other movie footage to prove a point (e.g. Beauty and the Beast, one of Marilyn Monroe’s classic lines from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, several romantic exchanges between Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn in Charade) and, to be sure, Lifetime-esque reenactments. But as the plot really starts to thicken—especially to those previously unfamiliar with this horrifying story—it’s clear that The Tinder Swindler has the rare ability to resonate on manifold levels with regard to highlighting human nature…and its cruelty.
Through key victim Cecilie Fjellhøy, a Norwegian woman who anchors the thread of the plot, Morris opens on her subject applying makeup as though getting ready for a date. Morris wants us to know that, despite everything, Fjellhøy is still looking. Still hopeful that she’ll find the kind of real love that’s so frequently depicted in television and film. And, of course, if that love happens to come in the package of a man who is as wealthy as “Simon Leviev” pretended to be, all the better. For, as Marilyn’s character, Lorelai Lee, said, “Don’t you know that a man being rich is like a girl being pretty? You wouldn’t marry a girl just because she’s pretty, but my goodness, doesn’t it help?” Cecilie certainly thought so when she was jetted away by Simon to Bulgaria for their first date. Or second date, if one counts the “getting to know you” coffee wherein Simon proceeded to engage in a classic gambit of love-bombing. And yet, as Cecilie admitted, “Very quickly, he became very personal, and that’s what I liked about it.” Because it presumes that Simon has only ever felt this comfortable “over sharing” so much with her. That there’s something “unique” enough about this woman for him to really “open up.” And, of course, this says as much about the average person’s own garden variety narcissism as it does about Simon’s more intense form of it in running this love scam that isn’t very original or ironclad at all. But the “chutzpah” of him doing it lies in knowing full well that few women will poke holes in his story because they genuinely want to believe in the yarn he’s spinning. It’s what they were told to believe in their whole lives, as Cecilie mentions from the outset of the documentary.
Pernilla Sjöholm, another victim of Simon’s, seems to be more pragmatic than that, telling Morris, “I’m a very independent woman. I always have been. I’ve done that since the age of sixteen. So I don’t need a man to take care of me. But I would appreciate to have a man to share my life.” Here, too, we see that not only does “Simon” seem to have a fetish for targeting similarly aesthetic’d Scandinavian women, but also those who veer closer to their thirties. This, in and of itself, reveals the brutal reality of what it means to be “aged out” in an app. Not to say a woman in this bracket (which isn’t even old, but society still ingrains us to believe it is) won’t continue to get “hits,” but her willingness to “believe” in someone as “too good to be true” as Simon seems to get the better of her. And Simon was also banking (literally) on that as well in terms of how he came to choose his victims. For, just because a woman is “older” does not mean she’s wiser when it comes to seeing past the bullshit. Because everyone wants to believe in the magic of Prince Charming as much as they want to believe in Jesus. Indeed, despite Pernilla and Simon agreeing they should just be “friends,” she still puts his name in her phone with a Prince Charming emoji next to it (whereas Cecilie’s emoji of choice for him is a red heart).
As Pernilla begins to rehash her own story of how Simon offered to fly her out to Amsterdam from Stockholm, she reiterates to us that even Googling someone before meeting with them is not at all enough to get a sense of who they truly are. That said, even though Pernilla finds Simon’s name associated with LLD Diamonds, which sounds about as real as Fortunata Fashions (it’s a Friends reference), it’s all part of the elaborate image he has cultivated for the benefit of running his true “business”: a love Ponzi scheme. Borrowing from Petra to pay Paula, as it were. For yes, he ran his game on one woman, while courting another to later siphon cash from by displaying to her that he was “good or it.” Or rather, his faux girlfriend behind the scenes was.
Another such woman who fell victim to this and is featured as an interview subject in The Tinder Swindler is Ayleen Charlotte. Otherwise known as: the baddest bitch in this documentary. Not only because she swindles him back by selling a large bulk of his designer clothes on eBay, but because she was able to see him again without revealing any physical signs of sickness, describing how, “He hugged me and he kissed me and I felt so disgusting. I was so angry, and I wanted to scream. But the only thing I said was, ‘I love you’ and ‘I missed you.’” So it is that she gives him but a small taste of his own medicine by pretending that she actually gives a damn about him.
Ayleen was “fortunate” enough to unearth the extent of “Simon’s” lies (after fourteen months of dating him) when she came across the feature article that Cecilie and Pernilla helped break entitled, what else, “The Tinder Swindler.” When Ayleen sends him the link before going into airplane mode on her flight, he doesn’t act “caught” at all, because whenever he’s confronted with his own lies by any woman, all Simon does is double down and then threaten. In many regards, he’s like both Shaggy saying, “It wasn’t me” and Stanton (Bradley Cooper) in Nightmare Alley, believing in his own lies so genuinely (that’s what you have to do to successfully run a con, n’est-ce pas?) that he suffers from what’s called “shuteye.” Blinded to his own depravity and the harm it causes others. And yes, the phrases “evil” and “piece of shit” are rightly tossed around to describe Simon.
With the news being out in the open, which is what Cecilie wanted so that other women could identify him and not have to go through the same ordeal, what was almost as cruel as “Simon” doing this repeatedly was the reaction his victims received after the release of the story. Comments about how “stupid” and “gullible” women are. Yes, how “terrible” that a woman should take people—namely, men—at face value when they say something. Or care enough about another person to actually help them out in any way they can when they see they’re hurting or in a bind. The backlash against the victims was as absurd as it was an upsetting glimpse into the lack of empathy on humanity’s part—as well as the expectation that of course a woman should anticipate being conned on an app like Tinder (which rich people don’t actually need to use), and that the con was all the more brilliant because Simon targeted attractive women who likely wouldn’t feel suspicious about being pursued by someone like him. But women are not “stupid” for buying into the construct of love; maybe it’s that men are simply diabolical at their core for never being able to give it on any kind of long-term basis—con artist or not.
Yet Cecilie, who should be more jaded than anyone, is the first to continue to gush about the wonders of love as she notes, “That’s what I think is most amazing about love… no matter how many heartbreaks you’ve had, you still go after it.” But is that “amazing” or perhaps the ultimate sign of human frailty? With specific regard to women who have been pumped full of propaganda their entire lives and find it difficult to deprogram after numerous cardiovascular eviscerations.
Sounding like Carrie Bradshaw with the line, “I’m looking for love. Real love. Ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can’t-live-without-each-other love,” Cecilie says at the beginning, “I’m after that all-consuming, the kind of—what you’ve grown up with. The first memories that I have about love is Disney.” Morris then proceeds to show us clips from Beauty and the Beast. Except that Simon does the reverse, transforming from Prince Charming into a total monster once these “princesses” unearth who he really is. The same can be said for so many men. Even the ones who wreak far less financial damage are perfectly capable of inflicting that of the emotional variety. “One little swipe can change your life.”
Yeah, for the worse. Maybe that’s how The Tinder Swindler serves as the ultimate antidote to any Disney movie or other assorted rom-com. Both genres that tout the idea of encountering through a tangible “meet-cute,” a near impossibility in this presently virtual world. Incidentally, it is only as the documentary commences that it is briefly acknowledged how most people would probably prefer to still be able to actually meet someone “in real life” (whatever that means anymore), like at a bar or a grocery store, but that we’ve gone too far down the twenty-first century rabbit hole (just another way in which said century blows) to go back to that.
And, ironically, despite all of us being more detectable, traceable and “knowable” than ever, it has never been easier to dupe a stranger with the projection of an image. The one we want to be seen, the one we all curate so well. Everyone’s a performer, only some don’t get paid quite as handsomely for it as “Simon” did.
