Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Goodbye June’ on Netflix, a holiday weepie directed by and starring Kate Winslet
Kate Winslet directs and stars in Goodbye June (now on Netflix), a holiday weepie dramedy about a family bearing down to say goodbye to their dying matriarch. At first blush, it’s a star-studded affair, with a cast that includes Andrea Riseborough, Timothy Spall, Helen Mirren and Toni Collette. But beyond that, it’s a sneaky expansion of the Winslet family’s burgeoning cinema empire – it’s not only her behind-the-camera debut, but it’s also written by Joe Anders, her son with ex-husband Sam Mendes (and that follows her daughter Mia Threapleton’s big breakthrough earlier this year, as arguably the best thing about Wes Anderson’s extraordinary The Phoenician Scheme). So of course we have to work through the nepotism entanglements in order to determine if the movie lives up to the promise of all that talent.
GOODBYE JUNE: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: The shrill whistle of the teakettle is like a siren: June (Mirren) was waiting for her cuppa to boil when she suddenly hit the floor. Thankfully, her son Connor (Johnny Flynn) was home to hear the thump. He and his dad, Bernard (Spall) follow the ambulance to the hospital, where June gets her lungs drained of fluid. A gaggle of family drops everything to be by her side: Daughters Julia (Winslet) and Molly (Riseborough) arrive with young children in tow. Julia falls on the grenade and calls eldest sister Helen (Collette) and gets her to cut short whatever flighty new age exercircle she oversees and fly in from Germany. All hands on deck.
Angel (Fisayo Akinade), the sweetest and most caring nurse in film history, swoops in to entertain the kids so the siblings can consult with the doctor and learn the awful news that June isn’t likely to live to see Christmas in two weeks. No more surgery. No more chemo. They’re in the “keep her comfortable” stage of treatment. Few things are more heartbreaking. They’re not sure how to break it to June. She awakens to the clatter and chatter of all these children and grandchildren. And she seems to be cognizant enough of her condition – pain, immobility, weakness – to understand what’s going on, and it’s telling that she prefers to just stay in the hospital instead of going home. Good thing, because Bernard is a doddering mumbler who left the sink running, flooding the place. Soon enough he’ll be hobbling with his cane off to the pub for a pint, or quaffing cans and shouting at the football match on the telly right there in the hospital room.
Of course, there’s nothing like crisis and togetherness to inflame familial tensions. Julia and Molly are at each other’s throats over, I dunno, do they even remember anymore? For Molly, a stay-at-home mom, every situation is an opportunity for an argument; her husband Jerry (Stephen Merchant) is a sweetheart. For Julia, who doesn’t see her children enough because she works and works and works some more, it’s the stress of being a supportive breadwinner for a lot of the people crammed into this hospital room; her husband frequently travels for work, e.g., right now. Helen is one of those people who drags a yoga mat everywhere like a security binkie; oh, and surprise, she’s pregnant. Connor is a gently troubled soul whose demeanor implies unemployment, or permanent caretaker for his parents; he wanders quietly into the hospital chapel for a bit of a cry, and sees Angel in there.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of? Is Terms of Endearment still the gold standard of deathbed weepers? For some reason I remembered the existence of Robert De Niro-in-the-hospital/vaguely Christmas family drama Everybody’s Fine, too.
Performance Worth Watching: Out of this stellar cast, all of them quite up to snuff, the standout is Akinade, whose character has no contrived issues to contend with, and therefore can be beautifully, poignantly earnest.
Memorable Dialogue: June takes a deep breath and calls her bickering family to order with an impressive succinctness: “You little SHITS!”, she bellows.
A Holiday Tradition: Well, the bittersweetness of the season is never so bitter than when a loved one is about to miss the big day. And when the family feels the absence the following Christmas.
Does The Title Make Any Sense? It’s not holiday-pilled, but it’s a typically obvious Netflix title that explains what everyone in the movie is supposed to do.
Our Take: To paraphrase Dom Turetto: Fambly. To paraphrase a threadbare cliche: You can’t live with ’em, you can’t live without ’em. And it hurts to lose one of ’em, especially the matriarch who, if I’m reading the signs correctly, has been the superglued-together umbrella keeping everyone together, because ol’ Bernard over there doesn’t seem to quite have all his faculties, and whether that’s funny or not is very much up in the air like a haze – a haze that could be cleared up with tighter writing. But that writing also includes a scene in which June summons the last fumes of her energy to bring the calamity to order for a minute at least.
The moment works because Mirren brings heft to any movie she’s in, and Winslet is, to no one’s surprise whatsoever, a director keyed on performances, and capable of pulling together a cast that can bring more heavy ammunition to the battlefield than most any Netflix hanky-loader would ever require. All present parties give their all (or at least their most) to a so-so screenplay that surely looks better to a director when a director is the writer’s mother, but to be honest, there’s far, far worse in the streaming-movie landscape than a formulaic and slightly thin holiday tragicomedy that endears itself to us with its talent, and a few universal truths about life and death.
And so, for example, we look past a lovely human being of a nurse named Angel – a little on the nose, isn’t it? – and focus on the patience and empathetic humanity the character embodies. While Winslet’s visual acumen fits your TV panel just fine (that’s ever so slightly a slight, sorry), she hones in on a sincere tone that sidesteps the temptation to get too zingy with the comedy or heavy-handed with the tragedy. She quite effectively simulates the suffocating tightness of a hospital room full of people and IV buddies, and nurtures Mirren as she gamely indulges some of the far-from-glamorous indignities of painful sits in an antiseptic loo.
As the screenplay works through a round-robin of old grudges and long-overdue hugs, every character gets their moment. Maybe Goodbye June gets two, maybe three hairs too cutesy for its own good, and the catharsis feels a bit muted and contrived, but we’re left with the feeling that all the characters are relatively realistic in their manner of dealing with a difficult situation in their own dysfunctionally functional ways – which is a way of saying they’re all just getting by like the rest of us.
Our Call: Goodbye June offers a perfectly acceptable balance of warm fuzzies and sad droopies. STREAM IT.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year! (At least, that’s what Andy Williams promised.) The holidays are a time to celebrate with family, friends, food, and, let’s not forget, fun things to watch. Whether you’re huddled up with the whole family in your living room or cozying up under the covers with your tablet, let Decider be your guide to all things festive this holiday season.
John Serba is a freelance film critic from Grand Rapids, Michigan. Werner Herzog hugged him once.
