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.
