The title character of writer-director Emmanuelle Nicot’s feature debut “Love According to Dalva” Her age is very different to other girls. This 12-year-old looks like an adult. “lady,” as one of the girls at the youth shelter she’s been shipped to points out — by which she means like a woman much older. It’s a mix of lace blouses with prim skirts. There are pearl earrings as well as a casual updo. Dalva (Zelda Samson) looks not so much like someone wanting to look older as she does like someone who doesn’t know how to act her age. Nicot monitors the process Dalva takes to get back to feeling and being the girl she’s meant for.
When we first meet Dalva, it’s not immediately clear why she’s so dissimilar from girls her age. This is because she’s introduced to us as she’s kicking and screaming as the police are taking an older man (her father, it turns out) away from her. “Jacques!” She yells. “Dalva!” He responds. They are both inconsolable and the officers try to keep them apart. The young girl is dropped off at a youth centre where Dalva cannot help but wonder why anybody would keep her from her father.
The answer to that question may not seem obvious to her, but it is to everyone else: To hear lawyers and social workers (and even schoolmates) tell it, Dalva has lived for years with a man who’s led her to believe they are in love. These are the words “incest” And “pedophile” They are sent her way. They are thrown at her with great aplomb. No one understands. No one has forced her to do anything. There’s been nothing untoward about her (sexual) relationship with her father. There are valid reasons, she believes, why she hasn’t seen her mother in years, why she’s been home schooled, why they’ve constantly been on the move, and why she’s been kept so isolated from her peers.
Many of “Love According to Dalva” The character keeps the viewers close. First, physical. DP Caroline Guimbal photographs many of the scenes in the youth center and school from a close-range position. Samson frequently takes control of the shot. It leaves us without any vantage point to see the events around Dalva. Sometimes, it makes us feel just as confused as her when we hear the accusations. Nicot slowly allows both film and characters to come out of their shells. To blossom, even. As she develops a closer friendship with her roommate Saima (Fanta Guirassy) and begins to see her circumstances from other people’s perspectives, Dalva begins to (try to) shed the worldview she’s long considered natural about who she loves and, crucially, how she’s let herself be loved.
Nicot is to be commended because she bravely delved into so difficult territory. There’s no judgment in how she’s conceived, let alone in how she’s shot. The air of condemnation that sometimes greets her at school, by girls who cannot understand let alone empathize with her plight (the kind Saima suggests Dalva ignore altogether), stands in direct contrast with Nicot’s interest in telling her story.
Samson deserves credit as well. The young performer is luminous as Dalva, able to capture the continued bewilderment that comes as this young girl reexamines everything she’s ever known. The first thing that strikes is her gradual shift from a ladyly appearance to a more casual, comfortable look. Samson slowly lets Dalva’s skittishness mellow enough that child-like wide-eyed wonder becomes the appropriate way she starts to look at the world. It’s a thrilling and gripping performance, moving just as easily toward a maturity in acknowledging what’s happened to her while also retreating into the welcome and much-needed innocence of which Dalva has long been robbed.
Given its subject matter, you’d be forgiven for thinking “Love According to Dalva” It would have been difficult to watch. And it is, to an extent, with many a scene skirting particularly unsavory territory — especially when it comes to how Dalva interacts with the men around her. The film has its moments of humor, laughter and even catharsis. Nicot encourages us not to feel sorry for this girl, but instead to be kind. It’s an astounding feat of filmmaking, particularly for the way it avoids facile moralistic or didactic approaches to telling Dalva’s story. Instead it does what cinema is so well-suited to accomplishing, allowing us to inhabit another person’s consciousness by seeing the world through their eyes, their pain and even their trauma.