Movie Review: Death, family and Christmas in Kate Winslet’s directorial debut ‘Goodbye June’

Terminal illness, estranged adult siblings and hospital rooms are certainly not going to be everyone’s cup of tea around the holidays, but you probably already know by this point whether this is an experience you want to sign up for. It remains a mystery why so many holiday movies feel the need to include a dying mother. Perhaps it's because, from an emotional standpoint, it rarely misses.

Unlike, say “The Family Stone” however, “Goodbye June” actually places the audience in that most unpleasant of settings: The hospital. It begins with a nightmare scenario, with the elderly mother, June ( Helen Mirren ) collapsing as the kettle cries out on the stove. Her grown son Connor (Johnny Flynn) finds her, collects his father Bernie (Timothy Spall), and they race off to the hospital, forgetting to turn off the tap in the sink before they leave. “Goodbye June” has an eye for the mundane details that make up everyday life that all seem so small in the face of loss.

Soon, they’re greeted by the rest of June and Bernie’s daughters, Julia (Winslet), a successful, busy and exhausted mom of three, Molly ( Andrea Riseborough ), a hippie mom of many who resents Julia and can’t accept that her mother is dying, and Helen (Toni Collette), who likes crystals. The four grown children are wildly unprepared to deal with their mother’s decline. Molly, perhaps the most baffling character, shoos away the palliative care workers, insisting on taking June home immediately.

June, calmly telling her kids that she would rather stay in the hospital than go home, is a balm in all of the craziness. At least one person is ready to face it all head on.

Certainly this is a story about how so many people aren’t ready to deal with the one inevitability in life, and how imminent grief affects everyone differently. But the script doesn’t do a character like Molly many favors. Her smug rejection of reality borders on annoying and the eventual explanation of why she’s been estranged from Julia for so many years doesn’t help.

Winslet, making her feature directorial debut, isn’t doing anything flashy here, with stylish choices or long takes, like Anders’ father Sam Mendes might. She shoots it simply, which is fitting for the story. This is a piece about characters and Winslet gives her actors space to build people that by and large feel pretty real — the standouts are really Flynn, as the sensitive son still living at home and closest to his parents, and Spall, believably oblivious in that charmingly British way.

The story progresses in mostly expected ways, with each child getting their own moment with mom before the end. Aside from several questionable choices to make the audience wonder whether or not June has died, and a nurse character named Angel (Fisayo Akinade), “Goodbye June” does also have moments of grace, humor and insight.

“Goodbye June,” a Netflix release in select theaters Friday, streaming on Dec. 24, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association for “language.” Running time: 114 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.