Love According to Dalva

All it would have taken was a few unfortunate creative decisions and the film would have sunk under the weight of its controversial subject matter. But Emmanuelle Nicot handled it very well. [KVIFF 2022] (22/07/2022)

The feature debut of French director Emmanuelle Nicot balances on thin ice and chooses a topic that is still not talked about in public. In the hectic opening, the underage girl Dalva (Zelda Samson) is taken away from her father, with whom she has an overly intimate relationship – when she was younger, he took her away from her mother and sexually abused her. It's a thoughtful drama about the difficulty of understanding a youthful perspective, letting us interpret the action instead of including descriptive footage. Dalva enters the story looking and dressed like an adult woman and is integrated into a children's society in which her childlike qualities are again to shine through. Although the institutions have good intentions for her, it becomes clear that none of the educators can understand the complex life situation in which the immature and unhealthy girl has found herself. The first half promises a thoroughly depressing character and relationship study, which eventually gives way to a somewhat superficial climax where the author's message yields to a universal template. Nevertheless, it’s a thought-provoking portrayal of the issue, the pitfalls of which are far from ending with the arrest of the rapist, as the underage victims face a wide range of social, emotional and physical consequences. (02/07/2022)

The film elegantly demonstrates the distorted optics of the teenage victim and the true nature of sexual violence in a family, which is not about hurting, but rather a complex manipulation of what we consider normal. An amazing performance by Zelda Sampson. (24/05/2022)