Wales On Sunday

TO OLIVIA (PG)

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ROALD DAHL was a fighter pilot, spy and, of course, one of the world’s most successful children’s writers.

So how do you distil such an eventful life into a 90-minute feature film?

Writer-director John Hay doesn’t even try. To Olivia is one of those biopics that uses one pivotal period to get to the nub of the man.

A stylish animated sequence under the opening credits traces the paths of dashing fighter pilot Dahl (Hugh Bonneville) and Hollywood star Patricia Neal (Keeley Hawes) to a meeting at a New York party in 1951.

When the action begins, it’s 1961 and they are living in a “rickety old tub” of a house in Great Missenden, Buckingham­shire, with their three young children, Olivia (Darcey Ewart), Tessa (Isabella Jonsson) and Theo (Alfie and Tommy James Hardy).

Neal and Dahl are wonderful parents but their careers have stalled. James and the Giant Peach is a flop and the plum roles have dried up for Neal. Then tragedy strikes when seven-year-old Olivia dies of measles.

Dahl can’t process his grief, numbing his pain with whiskey while attempting to write Charlie And The Chocolate Factory in the garden shed.

He leaves Neal, who also likes a drink, to look after Tessa and Theo on her own.

This narrow focus leaves plenty of questions unanswered (Theo’s car accident is barely mentioned) and at times it feels like you’re watching a single episode of a cancelled miniseries.

But great casting keeps us watching. Bonneville never tries to gloss over Dahl’s selfishnes­s, while Hawes lets us feel Neal’s exasperati­on with Dahl turning into cruelty. We care about them because we believe in them.

■ Available now on Sky Cinema and Now TV

 ??  ?? Hugh Bonneville is excellent as Roald Dahl
Hugh Bonneville is excellent as Roald Dahl
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