Written for RAF News April 2023

A young girl is taken from her home and placed in a shelter after being kidnapped, brainwashed and abused by her own father. Here she must come to terms with what has happened to her, learn to trust the people in her care and reintegrate with kids her own age.

Rather than focus on the abuser, or the acts of abuse, the film instead focusses on the victim, eagerly trying to understand the world through her eyes in this powerful Belgian drama.

Dalva (Zelda Samson) is 12 years old but dresses well beyond her years in lace dresses and pearl earrings. Though her father was arrested, she wants nothing more than to see him again, making desperate attempts to flee the shelter to the prison where he is being held. Far beyond Stockholm Syndrome, she has been convinced that the sexual relationship that they had was an expression of love that others simply don’t understand. 

At the shelter, her new roommate Samia (Fanta Guirassy) is hardly sympathetic – coming from a place of neglect herself. Samia is tough, but will ultimately become a friend and guardian of Dalva – especially when she is dropped into school, where there is a difference in social standing. Other children speak forwardly and matter of factly about Dalva’s experiences, trauma that she has not yet even begun to process.

Love According to Dalva is an interesting film that burrows into some difficult and uncomfortable ideas – but does so with complete consideration for the victim, played with believable conviction by Samson. A darkly complex idea that shows an insidious form of abuse from the point of view of the victim to whom everything has been normalised.