This film isn't an out-and-out giallo, but it ticks enough boxes to make it worth a look. It's a pretty good film too, which is an added bonus for those of us who watch anything remotely giallo-esque.

Inspector Amaldi and his partner Frese, in between visiting their ailing boss in hospital and romancing girls who've come to them for protection from stalkers, try to solve the case of a taxidermist who's going around lopping limbs off people (after killing them). They soon realise that events from their boss Ajaccio's childhood may hold the key to unlocking the case within which the solution to the case may be found...

This film displays at least as many, and probably far more, American influences than Italian ones. There's a vaguely CSI feel to it all, with the focus on crime scene aftermaths* and police investigation (and, going slightly further back, the crime scenes sometimes come across as Se7en-lite).  The typical late 90s/early 00s drab Italian photography is livened up occasionally by CSI-esque high contrast lighting, and a couple of chase scenes, and some flashbacks, employ jazzy music video editing. There's even a hint of Manhunter, with the tortured Amaldi seemingly unable to avoid throwing all of himself into every case (and some of himself into some of the subjects of some of  the cases).

Amaldi is a decent character, though; far more interesting than your average movie cop. He has the dark past which lingers over him like a perpetual raincloud, even if he's probably not as astute a cop as the likes of Manhunter's Will Graham (a criminally long amount of time elapses between the killer being identified as an amateur taxidermist, and the police actually finding a viable suspect). Speaking of viable suspects, the amateur sleuth (AKA the viewer; the traditional amateur detective character being almost extinct in twenty first century gialli) has a grand total of two from whom to choose. One of these is heavily red herringed, which pretty much does the sleuthing work for you (although the film does try and trick you by having the killer look about 20 years younger than the age that logic dictates he must be).

Eros Puglielli, who probably deserved a better career than he's gone on to have, could have given himself a fighting chance of a surprising reveal if he'd limited the killer's unmasked screentime to a single, relatively innocuous, early appearance. Having them return halfway through the film to remind the viewers of their existence, and deliver some fairly ponderous exposition, is, however, a dud move. I'll hold my hands up and say that I haven't read the novel upon which the film is based, so I don't know whether Puglielli has improved upon or bungled the original work. Either way, he shows some nice touches, and could probably have delivered a properly stylish thriller with more money and better material (couldn't we all though?).

There are a few giallo 'homages', with one of the more overt being the central plot device of a killer constructing a human doll from murder victims' body parts (a nod to Frankenstein via Lamberto Bava's Body Puzzle). There are a couple of small nods to Argento (climbing up a rickety ladder to access a building via a first floor window being one), as well as a modern take on the artificial-looking person-falling-down-a-cliff effect beloved of Lucio Fulci. Puglielli doesn't throw in any overt homages, which is to his credit-I don't need to be reminded of other, better films when watching something. He's made his own beast, something which he may have seen as a US-influenced thriller rather than a giallo (the film seems to have been primarily marketed as a straight thriller, and he describes it as a 'gothic film' in the 'Making Of' documentary) yet which, more than probably any other Italian film this century, proves that the giallo doesn't have to be a thing of the past, and that its DNA still pervades the odd Italian thriller. It's just a shame that the Italian film industry seems to have taken a leaf** from Inspector Amaldi's book of slow investigations, and is taking its sweet time about actually linking that DNA to a fully-viable suspect(/great giallo film).

 ​Enrico Rossini, an Italian who teaches at an English girls' school, is trapped in a stale marriage. He tries to liven things up by fraternising with Liz, one of his students. An idyllic boat date on the Thames is ruined, however, by Liz's refusal to let him to all the way (to full sex). He thinks her claiming to have caught a glimpse of a girl being knifed at the riverside is just her latest excuse, but when a body is discovered the next morning Rossini can't resist returning to the scene of the crime. The victim turns out to be one of Liz's classmates, and the police uncover clues that contradict Rossini's alibi. Now that he's under suspicion, Rossini does all he can to clear his name... no, wait, he establishes a love nest which he hopes will finally help him shag Liz. When two more of his students, including Liz, are killed, the police think they have their man, only for Rossini to be cleared through forensic evidence. Still, he's been exposed as a love cheat who tried to shag his students, so his wife does the only sensible thing and dumps his sorry... no, my bad again, she decides to give the marriage another go. She and Rossini join forces with the police to try and crack the case, which seems to hinge around a mysterious bearded priest, and a young girl named Solange...

What Have You Done to Solange?* is a very strange film. It straddles the wide divide between high and low art, often straining to touch both poles simultaneously. On the one hand you have Ennio Morricone's sublime score, Aristide Massaccessi's luscious photography and  Massimo Dallamano's stately pace and (largely) classy direction, on the other you have the lecherous scenes set in the shower of a girls' boarding school, and, indeed, the plot in general.

If you were surprised to read his wife is by Rossini's side for his investigations, know that he never successfully managed to have sex with Liz, which was noted in her autopsy. This is apparently enough to make Mrs Rossini forgive her husband's attempted indiscretions. Just as well Liz retained some of her virtue, or else our intrepid hero's reputation-and marriage-would've been ruined by her slutty, slutty ways! 

If you're surprised that Rossini (and forgiving wife) choose, and are allowed, to get stuck into the official investigation despite being teachers with absolutely no formal connection with the police, know that I am too. Especially given he showed no inclination towards amateur sleuthing when he was actually under suspicion for the schoolgirls' deaths. He's driven by something, though, to bring the mysterious 'bearded priest' to justice. If I had to guess what's at the heart of his motivations, I'd suggest that it's the same two things that lie at the heart of the film in general-a reverence for female purity and a reverence for tits.

Tits-wise, Rossini is all about bending Liz to his sexual will, to the extent that he cultivates the love nest, replete with posters of topless chicks stuck about the bed, to try and seal the deal. Likewise, the film contains two shower scenes, ostensibly to set up one of Rossini's fellow teachers as a red herring, but really as an excuse to revel in as much boobs and bush as possible. The second such scene contains an extended shot which cuts the girls' heads off, and literally renders them faceless flesh objects. The murder scenes, too, all contain female nudity. 

This is where the tits and purity intersect. These gritty, unpleasant scenes don't overly linger on the victims' bodies (which are nonetheless on full display); instead the intention seems to be to shock and appal the viewer. There seems to be an idea at play regarding the destruction of youthful innocence (even if it's unintentional, it's there). The schoolgirls, while never really portrayed as paragons of virtue, are young and beautiful. The film knows this, and appreciates it as much as Rossini, with his lusting after his students, does. And, when this youth and beauty are destroyed, the person responsible must be brought to justice. This seems to be what drives Rossini, even though he himself was engaged in a concerted campaign of attempted corruption (albeit corruption of a less extreme type). The fact that he's only motivated to investigate after Liz's murder, coincidentally the murder that proves his innocence, backs this up-he didn't have any inclination to do anything to clear his name himself.

My description of sex as 'corruption' just there was very deliberate. Given that this is an Italian film, and an Italian film from almost 50 years ago, it's not exactly progressive in its thinking. The men aren't judged for being pussy hounds, whereas the women bear all the consequences. (Note that in a 2006 interview, producer Fulcio Lucisano stated that the film is essentially conservative and anti-abortion.) Rossini does lose his job due to his indiscretions, but you don't feel that'll overly inconvenience him once his quest to avenge his virgin lover is over. The teacher who looks but doesn't touch is superficially painted as a sweaty pervert by the film, but isn't the film just as sweaty and just as pervy? In a literal sense, no, it's not, but in a metaphorical sense, it sure is.

It is a beautiful film in many ways, though. Ennio Morricone's soundtrack is sublime, among his very best work. Joe d'Amato (/Aristide Massaccessi, a man whose twin personae perfectly encapsulate the film's straddling of respectability and base exploitation) does a great job with the cinematography, and Massimo Dallamano is an assured director. It's a long film, though, and not exactly thrilling. Dialogue abounds, and, apart from one nighttime murder, which briefly hits lightning-and-shadows gothic heights, there's very little suspense. There's no appetite for showing beautiful things in peril, only in seeing them elevated (and bared) or destroyed.

The investigative plot proceeds at a fairly stately pace, and yet there are many strands which feel slightly incomplete, and not fully played out. This was most likely an editing decision, and necessary to keep the running time under two hours. As long as you stay alert, this slightly fractured approach to plot works quite well. In particular, scenes in which the police discover evidence are in short supply; instead we jump straight to said evidence being produced in front of suspects. This is an efficient way of streamlining, and actually can subtly cast suspicion upon the police as we momentarily wonder if they've manufactured evidence.

Said police do play a larger role than in most gialli, no doubt partly due to the German financing, and the film's being marketed there as an Edgar Wallace kimi (the edited, nudity-lite version may well have resembled a krimi, but the plot had nothing to do with any Wallace story). The krimi link may also account for the London setting, as a large amount of those films were set in Wallace's native land. It certainly wasn't set in the UK for reasons of verisimilitude, as the incident which sparks the plot into life wouldn't have occurred in the early 70s, thanks to then-recent legislative changes... 

The exact nature of this incident is one of the twin mysteries at the heart of the film, and is the answer to the titular question. The other is the  standard 'who is the killer?' mystery, which breaks from giallo tradition by almost being solvable through rational Holmesian logic. If you pay close attention during certain scenes, and question the provenance of certain information possessed by some of the characters, you should be able to crack the case. As usual, you'll have access to more info than the characters within the film, which might explain the bizarro left-field reasoning through which  Rossini lands on his main suspect (reasoning which is flawed anyway, due to either a mistake in the subtitles or scripting; just pay attention to what the photographer says on the boat, and compare that to Rossini's later logic).

The killer's reveal, which is possibly a belated attempt to generate suspense, doesn't really succeed, as it's dragged out interminably over close to ten minutes before a soundtrack sting accompanies the final, absolute, incontrovertible proof of the killer's identity. An identity which Rossini, first with his wife and then with wife and police, has spent the previous seven or eights minutes assiduously trying to establish. Karin Baal, in her hilariously forthright interview on the Arrow Blu Ray, says that the film is overlong and "not a thriller."** This is probably a fair summation, and it's possible that Dallamano wasn't even trying to make an exciting thriller, and was instead attempting something more beautiful, more fragile and more profound. What he came up with was sometimes beautiful, occasionally fragile, and profoundly uneasy with both itself and its women. 

If it seems like I'm overly-fixating on the treatment and portrayal of women in this film, get ready for the next two instalments of Dallamano's 'Schoolgirls in Peril' trilogy...