Made with painstaking care and sensitivity, this debut feature from Belgian film-maker Emmanuelle Nicot is about a child victim of grooming and rape who takes the side of her abuser; this is a 12-year-old girl called Dalva (Zelda Samson), whose father is arrested at the start. It’s an intense film about trauma and its devastating consequences. Nicot ignores the perpetrator to focus on the victim, a decision that makes this film just about bearable; I can’t think of another movie I was so reluctant to watch, but after it started I couldn’t look away.
Love According to Dalva opens with a police raid. “Jacques!” screams Dalva – not “Dad!” – as her father is bundled out of the house. Dalva is driven to a foster home for teenagers where she is furious, insisting that her sexual “relationship” with her father is perfectly natural; they love each other. The other kids laugh at her clothes, which are deeply disturbing: like a middle-aged woman circa 1987, she wears pearl earrings and lace-trimmed dress, her father’s twisted fantasy of a classy lady.
