The family drama “Goodbye June” is the rare mother-son cinematic debut: Kate Winslet, who also acts in the film, directs a script by her son, Joe Anders. It’s his first time screenwriting and hers directing, although freshman inexperience is more easily identified in the former. The story, about a dying matriarch and her stricken adult children, paints by numbers with stock characters and cloying scenarios.
Around Christmastime, June (Helen Mirren) puts the kettle on, then collapses. In the hospital, doctors break the news to June’s children and husband: Her cancer has metastasized; she will likely die before the holiday. Frail but unsentimental, June receives her situation stoically, with a tincture of denial. Her woolgathering husband, Bernie (Timothy Spall), barely registers a reaction. But the couple’s four children respond to the health assessment about as well as any kid might, with shock, accusations, anguish and an intrafamily row.
The altercation comes after years of bad blood between Julia (Winslet) and Molly (Andrea Riseborough), sisters whose paths in life diverged. Julia is a businesswoman, although her field of employment goes unexplored in the screenplay beyond the affluent lifestyle it accords. Her working-mom stresses are thrown into contrast by the truculent Molly, an organic-only mother with a defiant outlook. If those two scan as types, brace for Helen (Toni Collette), a New Age yoga instructor. Her idea of daughterly succor is to light sage, lay crystals and advocate healing energy. Helen is meant as comic relief, with audience laughs at her expense. In one scene, she conducts a freestyle Reiki session to activate June’s bowel movement.
The hackneyed feeling of the sisters’ clashes leaves the emotional heft of the movie to Connor (Johnny Flynn), June and Bernie’s youngest. He assumes responsibility for jolting his father back to reality, which means putting the kibosh on Bernie’s preferred coping strategy of drinking at the pub. As Connor, Flynn is considerably more subtle than his heavyweight fellow actors, who tend to lean into the syrupy melodrama. The movie’s corps d’elite of British talent is almost a joke unto itself; watching the cast undertake the formulaic material sometimes feels like observing as Top Chefs bake a Funfetti-mix cake.
Despite the unevenness of the script, among its strengths is the understanding that birth order dynamics can cast long shadows. The movie notes that Julia, the second eldest daughter, is the family’s de facto caretaker, while Molly, who once admired her big sister, acts in adulthood as her challenger. Connor, the youngest and an apparent failure-to-launch, tends to play the shrinking peacekeeper. Brimming with good nature, even in its more flat-footed sequences, “Goodbye June” wants us to know that none of these traits or familial currents are immutable — especially not in the face of a dying parent with a sharp tongue.
Goodbye June Rated R for language. Running time: 1 hour 54 minutes. Watch on Netflix.
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