Swoon as metaphor to AIDS crisis?

In “Aids and New Queer Cinema,” Monica B. Pearl analyzes Swoon as a film that subtly comments on AIDS. At the surface, Swoon portrays Leopold and Loeb’s murder of a little boy in 1924, specifically emphasizing the queer relationship between the murderers. On a deeper symbolic level, Pearl claims, the film is about control over death (31). It tries to make a “senseless” murder seem beautiful. Most importantly, the film is “a meditation on responsibility” (32) – Leopold and Loeb are “unashamed and unapologetic” for their premeditated murder; the murder might seem senseless to the viewer, but it makes perfect sense to them. The anachronisms interspersed throughout the film – Pearl cites a walkman and a telephone – make the film ahistorical, and therefore relevant to today. From these few points, Pearl concludes that Swoon is an AIDS film.

Tom Kalin, Swoon’s director, is no stranger to AIDS activism – he was a member of both ACT UP and Gran Fury. It is safe to assume that this film was directed by someone conscious of AIDS issues over responsibility. I am not convinced, however, that people with AIDS should ever be symbolically compared to psychopathic murderers. In addition, I don’t think the murder of a small boy has the same metaphorical implications of transmitting HIV.

If I assume that the film can be taken as a “meditation on responsibility,” then what exactly does Kalin suggest about responsibility? Loeb and Leopold are aware that they are committing a crime, and that the little boy they choose to murder is entirely innocent. The murderers would be most accurately compared, then, to HIV positive people who continue to have unprotected sex with other (innocent, unknowing) men, even though they know they’re transmitting a deadly disease. If HIV positive people who knowingly commit that indirect murder are “unashamed and unapologetic” for that murder, then does that make the sex artistic? Is that “exerting control” over death? What about the little boy, who symbolizes the person who unknowingly becomes HIV positive – where is his control over his own death? Does admitting responsibility for knowingly transmitting HIV make the crime alright?

I'm definitely failing to understand what this film is trying to say about AIDS. This makes me question Pearl’s analysis of Swoon as a critique of the AIDS crisis. To what extent does Tom Kalin consciously construct the Loeb and Leopold murder case as parallel to the AIDS crisis?