What have you done to Solange? - when sleaze isn't quite sleaze

(I am vastly indebted to Michael Mackenzie for lending me a copy of this film in its Italian 01 Distribution edition. It is currently unavailable in the UK on DVD.)

Gialli usually have a pretty unsavoury reputation because many of them go for exploitation; breasts and blood, with the latter usually following hard on the former. What have you done to Solange? contains lots of breasts, and lots of naked shots of actresses as schoolgirls. It contains a killer who likes stabbing his victims in the vagina and leaving them to bleed to death. One victim is drowned naked in a bathtub. But the difference between Solange and other films of this type is that the nudity and unhealthy atmosphere are fully intentional.

In fact, virtually every scene contains disturbing elements. The title sequence, of laughing girls on bicycles, seems innocuous enough - but when we discover just what their destination is, it's impossible to feel as light-hearted as they do. Then the film proper starts, and two lovers are kissing in a boat. She is over eighteen, so it's not paedophilia - but he is her secondary school teacher. What's more, he's the film's hero.

Enrico Rossini is not a sympathetic character. He cheats on his wife with a pupil, and while his wife gives as good as she gets, we are in little doubt that he is much to blame for their failing relationship. When his lover, Elizabeth, sees a murder, he at first considers it as a bad excuse to stop him getting into her pants. What's more, Fabio Testi's performance is somewhat cold and distant. Michael complains in his DVD Times review (http://www.dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=59968) that Testi is too inexpressive, but to some degree I think this is intentional. For example, the script never allows him to show any real grief when Elizabeth is killed. Rossini is outside events, projecting a rather selfish character that is shown by other people in the film. Inspector Barth is incredibly tactless and short-tempered at times, while one of the teachers derides Rossini as a sex maniac when he himself has been getting his jollies from spying on the girls' showers.

It's an uncaring world out there - and therein lies the point. The pupils at the Catholic girls' school - it's a Catholic girls' school in an Italian thriller, of course there'll be sleaze! - are not the innocents that adults wish them to be. The mother of one victim insists her daughter would have told her if she had a boyfriend; we are right to be sceptical about this. The girls are growing up faster than is wise, and the culmination comes when Solange - well, I'll tell you behind the cut.

Solange, as a character, is little seen. What happened to her, on the other hand, drives the whole plot because it provides the killer's motive. The killer is Solange's father. Her group of friends have been having sex with older men at university and Solange fell pregnant. Unwilling to tell her father, she agreed to an illegal abortion, and as a result has had a complete mental breakdown. It is telling that Elizabeth was killed by drowning, rather than by a knife through the crotch - she was the only one who was still a virgin and she wasn't ordinarily part of Solange's social group. She in fact protested against the abortion.

This is where the cycling comes in. The destination is the house where the abortion is to be performed, and 'it's all fun and games until someone has a long needle pushed into her vagina'. The girls have no idea of the dangers that the world contains; probably they've never been told. Certainly those that use them have no interest in doing so, while the parents and the teachers insist on thinking that they 'must be protected'. But if a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, a lot of ignorance is worse.

What's more, the abortion is carried through because 'there was no other way out'. The girls remain silent even when it becomes clear to them who is being targeted and why. The illusion must be kept up at all costs. The veneer of innocence must be maintained. As to why the girls feel this necessary, your guess is as good as mine, but I'm inclined to believe that the adults don't want to know, and the girls understand this.

In a way, the lack of knowledge is also shown in other elements of the film. The girls wander naked and quite unself-consciously in the showers, unaware that a pervert is salivating over them through a peephole. They are unaware of the true dangers lying out there, dangers that remain concealed because the girls think they can cope and don't want to shatter the illusions of their parents - that they 'don't have boyfriends'.

Seen in this light, the sleaze in the film becomes entirely appropriate. It is meant to be unsettling, it is meant to be cold, because it is all leading up to a point. The world of Solange may not be malicious in itself, but it's certainly uncaring. Another intriguing note is that there is very little gore. The film needs the sex for its message, but it doesn't need torrents of blood - so it doesn't have it. Massino Dallamano, the director and co-writer, knows what he's doing.

He knows what he's doing visually, too. The murders are well done and well edited, while there are good uses of pov shots. (I'm very fond of a moment where the killer runs down a flight of stairs) Dallamano knows what to show and when - the bathtub victim is naked when she is killed, yet we see nothing of her breasts or crotch. At that point, showing them would be going too far, and Dallamano knows it. The abortion is another highlight; there's no gore, but it's still shockingly unpleasant to watch. However, the climax is a little weak, and as always with Italian thrillers there are some stupid faults (Enrico's wife becomes completely different towards him after learning that he and Elizabeth never had sex - I should point out this was not for want of trying on his part!)

Also, I must mention Ennio Morricone's score, which is very good indeed and reminds me of Cat O' Nine Tails. The theme music is particularly good at appearing initially light-hearted, but having melancholic and disturbing undertones. Just like the bicycle ride, in fact.