The neat and moving To Olivia is about mourning, but especially about resilience ★★★☆☆

Seven feature films can be made about the life of writer Roald Dahl (1916-1990). He worked for Shell in Tanzania, was a fighter pilot in the British army during World War II, became a diplomat in Washington DC after the war, contributed to medical inventions (such as a special valve for the treatment of hydrocephalus), married twice and had five children. In addition to all that, he was a writer of short story collections, autobiographical novels and children’s books that are still incredibly popular.

the biopic To Olivia sensibly limited to a short period of Dahl’s busy existence. The story begins in November 1961, when Dahl lives in England with his wife, American actress Patricia Neal, and their three children. They’re doing well, though Neal struggles to balance work and motherhood, and Dahl isn’t quite as successful as he’d like. Their youngest child, baby Theo, is also recovering from a serious accident.

Dahl was not an easy man, his biographies are full, but he was fond of children in general and his family in particular. His eldest daughter Olivia is the apple of his eye and partner in crime: together they come up with crazy stories. When she becomes seriously ill at the age of 7, Dahl doesn’t know where to look.

To Olivia is about grief and its disruptive effect on a marriage. Yet the English director John Hay mainly emphasizes the resilience of the couple; Neal and Dahl both achieved their greatest career successes in a personal disaster year.

It’s all beautifully told in this neat and moving British drama, loosely based on the book Patricia Neal: An Unquiet Life by Stephen Michael Shearer. Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey† paddington) is an excellent Dahl and Keeley Hawes also plays a beautiful role as Hollywood star Neal, plucked from her natural habitat, who secretly longs for a return to the limelight.

What the film lacks is stubbornness. The fact that Dahl’s unruly sense of humor is virtually absent can still be defended: the film is not only about him. But the subdued tone, underlined by a soundtrack that is too present, also takes the sting out of the drama. For deep sorrow is in To Olivia no room.