There are certain expectations when it comes to a Kate Winslet-directed Christmas film. Goodbye June fulfils all of them. It has a prime rib cast, with Winslet herself joined on screen by Helen Mirren, Timothy Spall, Toni Collette, Andrea Riseborough, and Johnny Flynn. She hasn’t fussed around with their performances, working with a minimal crew and minimal intrusion from her cameras, so that every tearful, hands-clasped scene shimmers with such sincerity you half expect a Cadbury’s bar to be slipped into someone’s hand and a logo to materialise on screen. If it did, it’d be the talk of the nation for the next three weeks.
And they’re all, in a way, working specifically here from the Winslet emotional register of earnest practicality. She’s a human grounding rod, with the ability to cut right through to the heart with a single tear. Goodbye June was written by her son, Joe Anders, in his debut work. Its bittersweet take on the holiday brings together four disconnected siblings – Winslet’s Julia, Riseborough’s Molly, Collette’s Helen, and Flynn’s Connor – at their mother’s deathbed, as they wonder whether their beloved matriarch (Mirren’s June), diagnosed with terminal cancer, will make it to Christmas Day.
Winslet, however, might be too much of an actor to be a director. The performances here are irreproachable, and she even coaxes some beautiful moments from the film’s many child stars, but there’s very little film to be found built around them. “You don’t mind if I die now, do you, darling?” June whispers to Julia from her hospital bed. On June’s side of the camera, there’s a dreamy soft focus. On Julia’s side, it’s sharp. It serves the actor’s emotions, but looks aesthetically jarring to watch. It’s often hard to get a sense of the spaces these characters are moving through.
These are all actors accomplished enough that they don’t necessarily need to be given characters to convincingly emote. But still, Anders’s rendering of this family feels paper-thin. Julia and Molly, both mothers, are handed the lion’s share of the story. Julia is the corporate cog with a pair of AirPods permanently shoved down her ear canal, who regrets the time not spent on the sidelines of football games handing out flapjacks. Molly fusses over organic diets and has an oaf for a husband (Stephen Merchant). She’s jealous that Julia can afford to house their mother in their basement en suite (with underfloor heating!)
Their confrontations are effective. Yet Helen and Connor are as neglected by the film as they are by their own family members. We’re introduced to Helen as she’s plugged into a meditation tape, reassuring her that the concept of family can be entirely separated from herself; Johnny still lives at home and seems particularly directionless. Their troubles are solved so swiftly you might blink and miss them. Meanwhile, Fisayo Akinade features as a nurse called Angel to presumably alleviate the burden of having to craft a human being behind the patient smile. Angel’s aim in life is to ensure people receive “good goodbyes”. And, for a while, you sense Winslet’s film is trying to wrestle with the reality of how hard, in practice, that really is. But how are we meant to embrace that messiness when so much of it is hidden away from us off screen?
Dir: Kate Winslet. Starring: Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough, Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Timothy Spall. Cert 15, 114 minutes
‘Goodbye June’ is in selected cinemas from 12 December and streaming on Netflix from Christmas Eve
