It’s not clear how old Dalva (Zelda Sampson) is when her face first appears on screen, but the audience soon learns the 12-year-old is made to look much older than she is for a reason. Emmanuelle Nicot’s debut film, Love According to Dalva, opens in a frenzy of screams and shouts as Dalva, with her red hair placed perfectly into a chignon, bangs her fists on a door screaming for a man named Jacques (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) as the police take him away. Shortly after that, Dalva is seen being quietly examined by a calm but concerned doctor. The girl focuses on the woman’s eyes, brown skin, and necklace as the examination occurs. As Nicot’s camera zooms in on Dalva’s face, her youth is immediately apparent, and it’s clear that something horrible has happened to her, even if she doesn’t realize it just yet.
Sexual abuse and trauma are always challenging to unpack, especially when the survivors are children and have dealt with incest. They are also narratives that are nearly unbearable to watch on screen. However, by turning the story over to Dalva, instead of centering it on one of the adults surrounding her, Nicot never allows her audience to look away. Instead, in Love According to Dalava, we walk through Dalva’s journey with her as she struggles to understand the grooming and the abuse she’s endured while trying to recapture some of the childhood that has been snatched away from her.
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