‘Goodbye June’ Review: Kate Winslet’s Directorial Debut Is a Star-Studded Christmas Weepie About How Death Can Bring a Family Back Together

Written by Winslet's son, Netflix's soggy yuletide sop stars Helen Mirren, Andrea Riseborough, Johnny Flynn, and the director herself.

Kate Winslet’s “Goodbye June” — a terminally cozy Netflix Original that she directed from a script written by her 21-year-old son Joe Anders as part of his coursework at Britain’s National Film and Television School — isn’t the least bit shy about the extreme privilege that went into its production, and all things being equal, that’s probably for the best. Saccharine and schematic as the movie turned out to be in the end, it might have felt more dishonest if she hadn’t crammed her filmmaking debut full of her famous actor friends, or cashed in her kid’s accrued nepotism (his dad is Sam Mendes!) on a doughy piece of yuletide sop about the unexpected forces that can pull a family closer together. 

More to the point, whatever sweet and errant truths are buried within this glossy tale of a cancer-ridden Christmas can be found in — and stem from — its recognition of the privilege at its core. Not the privilege that “Goodbye June” is built upon, but rather the privilege that it reveals as the film’s strained family drama thaws into the stuff of an even broader holiday weepie. 

It’s the privilege of being able to receive death as a gift in disguise. The privilege of being able to say goodbye to someone who’s capable of saying it back to you. The privilege of being able to experience loss for the best of what it can leave us in return: Togetherness, grace, and the warmth of our fondest memories. I didn’t believe a lot about this movie, but I can’t help but appreciate that it doesn’t take its most valuable asset for granted. 

There are only 16 shopping days until Christmas, but poor June (Helen Mirren) probably isn’t going to make it for the festivities this year. She’s been sick with cancer for long enough that her scattered family has come to think of it as the status quo, but the whole brood is forced to constrict back to Cheltenham after June’s son Connor (a moppy, hyper-sensitive Johnny Flynn) finds her lying on the floor one morning. Connor refuses to admit even to himself is that his mom is about to be admitted to the local hospital for the last time, but — the stunted manchild of a movie family whose every member was assigned a different archetype at birth — he makes it his business to rally the troops, who will all have to make hasty adjustments to their holiday plans.

First up is Julia (played by Winslet herself), a put-together human pantsuit whose professional veneer and upwardly mobile ambition mask her struggle to be warm and present for her three kids, one of whom has special needs. She’s a natural foil for prickly middle child Molly (Andrea Riseborough), whose entire character — best as I could tell — is that she married tall (Stephen Merchant) and is very serious about only eating organic. That might still be enough, however, to give her the edge over June’s oldest daughter Helen (Toni Collette), a flighty new age breathing instructor who lives abroad and was recently impregnated by a random Greek stranger who knocks people up for fun and money. 

All summoned home with their clashing baggage in tow, these people are absolute models of complexity when compared to their doddering father Bernie, whose denial over June’s condition is so complete that he barely seems to know where he is half the time. Like most of the roles in this movie, Bernie would be an insufferable caricature if not for the skill and humanity of the actor playing him; contrived as it is to see him disassociate for comic effect (“Simon Cowell?” he responds to a doctor named Simon Khal) and mutter on about his “jerkin” before coming to terms with the imminent reality of June’s death (a sudden awakening worthy of Oliver Sacks), a giant like Timothy Spall can’t help but invest a rich history of love and loss into Bernie’s pre-grief process.

Nevertheless, the inescapable greatness of Winslet’s cast has the perverse effect of emphasizing her film’s mediocrity, as “Goodbye June” quickly sags into the gap between the work these actors are capable of and the work they’ve been enlisted to do here. Flynn’s role is mostly played by his pajamas, Collette seldom gets the chance to shine any brighter than her character’s healing crystals, and the friction between Winslet and Riseborough — while much rawer than the rest of the movie — sands down its recognizable sibling resentments without giving us the chance to fully appreciate how rough they were at the start. 

Mirren, at least, is heartrendingly believable as a sick woman on her way to repose, despite the fact that her hospital room is blasted with enough beatific white light to make it look like she’s halfway to heaven already. That’s par for the course in a facility where all of the nurses are angels (Fisayo Akinade’s diabolically endearing Nurse Angel in particular), and nobody else seems to be sick. The unforgiving close-ups that Winslet trains on Mirren’s face push for the naked honesty that Anders’ script would rather wrap in tinsel, and the movie around her is never more effective than when it weaponizes its comfiness to explore the various ways that people allow themselves to feel pain. And, by extension, the way that feeling pain allows them to be present. 

If the emotions in “Goodbye June” are as transparently manufactured as the fake snow that falls outside of the hospital windows, they’re all bundled up in a warm blanket of truth — the truth of how loss has a gravity that can bring a family closer together if they let it. Equal parts noxious and comforting in the tradition of wounded holiday movies like “This Is Where I Leave You” and “The Family Stone,” Winslet’s directorial debut may grovel for your sympathies, but at least it knows that bitterness, loss, and regret are what really makes the Christmas season so magical, and that we should all be so lucky to share them with each other in person. 

Grade: C+

Netflix will release “Goodbye June” in limited theaters on Friday, December 12. It will be available to stream on Netflix starting Christmas Eve.

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