Love Accord­ing to Dalva

“I’m not a girl, I’m a woman,” are the stab­bing words spo­ken by Dal­va (Zel­da Sam­son), a 12-year-old who wears heavy make­up, scrapes her hair into a bun and dress­es in mid­dle-aged women’s clothes. The film opens with offi­cers tak­ing Dalva’s father Jacques (Jean-Louis Coulloc’h) away. The cam­era resists lin­ger­ing on Jacques, clutch­ing onto Dalva’s gaze and cap­tur­ing every flinch and tear of pain.

Enraged and con­fused as to why she’s been ripped away from her father and placed into a tem­po­rary care home, Dal­va ini­tial­ly refus­es to com­ply with her new social work­er Jay­den (Alex­is Maneti). She demands to be reunit­ed with her father, who she only refers to by his first name, and the film unpacks the com­plex­i­ty of con­trol­ling rela­tion­ships through Dalva’s even­tu­al inter­ac­tions with Jayden.

It’s a frag­ile sub­ject mat­ter to explore. But when one in 20 chil­dren have been abused in the UK, it’s also a har­row­ing real­i­ty. Nicot pre­vi­ous­ly vol­un­teered at an emer­gency youth cen­tre, where she learned the sto­ry of a six-year-old girl who had lived alone with her father, who sex­u­al­ly abused her.

The char­ac­ters in Love Accord­ing to Dal­va are fic­ti­tious, but the sto­ry reflects real­i­ty. Nicot’s debut offers sen­si­tive and inti­mate insight into the lives expe­ri­enced by too many. Han­dled with del­i­ca­cy and brav­ery, Nicot has craft­ed a pow­er­ful anato­my of the imprint of sex­u­al abuse. Love Accord­ing to Dal­va is a voice for those who can’t speak out.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

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