A sensitively handled exploration of potentially lurid subject matter, Love According to Dalva is a quietly powerful debut feature by the young Belgian writer-director Emmanuelle Nicot. Premiering in Critics’ Week in Cannes, this humane depiction of sexual abuse and its aftermath is not exactly a feel-good family movie, but it does have plenty to recommend it, notably a strong aesthetic and a magnetic lead performance by young screen novice Zelda Samson. Further festival play seems assured after Cannes, with decent potential for art-house theatrical and streaming interest.
Love According to Dalva opens in a moment of traumatic rupture, a surprise police raid on a house in Northern France which leaves sulky 12-year-old Dalva (Samson) in distress and confusion. Taken into state care against her will, she is first subject to the indignity of an intimate medical examination, then deposited in a residential youth shelter full of other vulnerable children, mostly in their teens. The back story gradually emerges that Dalva has been in an abusive, controlling, incestuous relationship with her father Jacques (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h), who now sits in prison in Reims awaiting trial. But she angrily refutes this interpretation, insisting that Jacques loves her, and that she is old enough to know her own mind. “I’m not a girl, I’m a woman,” she protests.
Dalva initially faces hostility in the emotionally volatile, hormonally charged war zone of the youth shelter. But she slowly builds a bond of trust with her fearsome room-mate Samia (Fanta Guirassi) and her kindly, world-weary social worker Jayden (Alexis Manenti). Samia soon becomes a kind of mentor and protector to Dalva, especially when the mean-girl clique at their new school begin to ask salacious questions about her sex criminal father, leading to violent confrontation. “We’re all scum,” an angry Samia cautions Dalva, “we’re not like them and we never will be.”
On fraught supervised prison visits, Dalva slowly wakes up to the bleak truth that she has been deceived and violated by her own father. The emotional fall-out is messy as she tries to shake off years of mental manipulation, reclaim her stolen childhood and live as a normal, budding adolescent. Dalva’s disorienting experiments with alcohol lend the film a welcome spark of black comedy, although her sexually inappropriate behaviour around older men shows that the damage runs deep. Meanwhile, her estranged mother (Sandrine Blancke) makes an awkward attempt to reconnect and unpick the shared layers of blame and shame.
The success of Love According to Dalva as compelling drama hinges squarely on the casting of its young heroine. Nicot and her mostly female team have done excellent work here, because the non-professional Samson is a real discovery, with a uncanny face that morphs from prematurely sophisticated baby-doll Lolita to punky tomboy to vulnerable child. Caroline Guimbal’s dreamy cinematography, full of intimate close-ups and minute detail, underscores the queasy sense of Dalva cautiously rediscovering and reclaiming her body after years of outside control. Samson’s young co-stars, especially Guirassi, also deserve full credit here.
While previous films with similar themes, such as Samantha Morton’s The Unloved (2009) or Destin Daniel Cretton’s Short Term 12 (2013), have painted a much darker picture of abused children in state care, Love According to Dalva ultimately makes broadly hopeful statement about post-traumatic healing and self-empowerment. In the process Nicot arguably settles for an overly sweet resolution, with justice served and order restored in a manner rarely seen in real-life abuse cases. But this tonally well-balanced debut is much more of a tender, tightly focussed character study than a harrowing incest story. The theme may be bleak but there is humanity, warmth and even humour here, with both director and star showing great potential.
Director, screenwriter: Emmanuelle Nicot
Cast: Zelda Samson, Alexis Manenti, Fanta Guirassi, Marie Denarnaud,Jean-Louis Coulloc’h, Maïa Sandoz, Sandrine Blancke, Charlie Drach
Producers: Julie Esparbes, Delphine Schmit
Cinematography: Caroline Guimbal
Editing: Suzana Pedro
Music: Frédéric Alvarez
Production companies: Helicotronic (Belgium), Tripode Productions (France)
World sales: MK2
Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Critics’ Week)
In French
83 minutes
