The 1924 kidnap and beating to death of young Bobby Franks is one of those cruel and unusual crimes destined to live in the public imagination in perpetuity. The killers -- over-privileged Jewish law students Nathan Leopold Jr. and Richard Loeb -- committed an intellectual exercise, testing the hypothesis that they could, through dealing death, become gods. Their homosexuality informed the subsequent Chicago depression trial that rode the tide of public opinion like nothing else of the time.

Hitchcock's stylistic work-out Rope (1948) and Richard Fleischer's novel-based Compulsion (1957) -- rightly praised for Dean Stockwell's sterling playing -- both sourced the killing, but restricted by period failed to unearth the underlying truth masked by the protagonists' sexuality. Experimentalist Tom Kalin's grained monochrome feature debut is, therefore, the most accurate account of events, attempting in a severely restricted screen-time to depict lifestyle, crime and aftermath against the self-imposed backdrop of both their homosexuality and the case's own inherited lore. The whole is pulled off with no little style and ingenuity.

Craig Chester and Daniel Schlachet's Leopold and Loeb are as loathably decadent as they are openly gay; Swoon defiantly waves the banner for Queer Cinema but refuses to truck with notions of easy political correctness. Kalin -- who scripted and provided the frequently mesmerising editing -- is audacious enough not to deny humour to his picture -- women were banished from the courtroom for fear of offence -- nor the almost banal nature of the killers' approach to the crime itself, their virtual acceptance of apprehension as a logical step in their bid for a spurious kind of fame.

Kalin sets no limits -- "It puts the homo back into homicide" is how the film tags itself -- and succeeds all the more for it. Period detail is undercut by using modern objects -- push-button phones, tape recorders -- for contemporary relevance, and James Bennett's plaintive score is especially effective, particularly underlining the disposal of the corpse in a scene that has a lingering, hallucinatory quality. Kalin employs meticulous stylised tableaux, fractured narratives, archival footage, all of which limit his potential audience, but succeed in wringing an emotional punch that fascinating and appalling by turn, making Swoon a challenging, overwhelming, but rewarding experience.