Page 57 - Alternative Europe Eurotrash and Exploitation Cinema Since 1945

FIGURE 5 Susan hangs herself from rhe attic rafrers: The Schoolgirl Reports, Part Two: What Keeps Parents Awake (1971)

From the bedroom, we move to the courtroom where Susan, under oath, is compelled by the
defending attorney to confess the details of her immoderate sexual past. Rather than presenting
the erotic flashbacks once again, we hear her repeated confession over shots of her parents' - and
especially her father's - disbelieving reaction. Charges of statutory rape are dropped, according to the
law, when the girl in question has a history of promiscuity. After the trial, her father presses her for
an even more detailed confession until his violent and scornful reproach drives Susan to hang herself
by the rafters in the family attic. In the final shot of the flashback, the father releases Susan's limp,
but still-breathing, body from her home-made noose. N o w back in the psychologist's office, Susan
- who earlier remarked that her favourite subject in school is German history {Deutsche Geschichte)
- must come to terms with her transgressions by telling her story (her Geschichte) over and over again
- (Immer wieder!). The repetitions of sex are transmuted into compulsions of confession.
Susans triple confession sets in motion what Foucault describes as the 'perpetual spirals of power
and pleasure'. The intensity of the confession renews the questioner's and viewer's curiosity and
satisfaction, while the one who confesses, who scandalises authority, is also realising 'the pleasure
that kindles at having to evade this power, flee from it, fool it, or travesty it'.12 Indeed, early in her
account, Susan flaunts the fact that her affairs occurred right under her father's nose, and that she
would continue to sleep around until caught. Most of the films in this series move through cycles
of breaking rules, being caught and confessing - though not always in this order - and reveal not a
repression of sexuality but a play of power and pleasure which comes from making and breaking rules
of sexual conduct.

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