Goodbye June (dir. Kate Winslet)

by Jack Martin | Dec 24, 2025

Certificate: 15

Running Time: 114 mins

UK Distributor: Netflix

UK Release Date: 24 December 2025

WHO’S IN GOODBYE JUNE?

Toni Collette, Johnny Flynn, Andrea Riseborough, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren, Timothy Spall, Stephen Merchant, Fisayo Akinade, Jeremy Swift, Raza Jaffrey

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

Kate Winslet (director, producer), Joe Anders (writer), Kate Solomon (producer), Ben Harlan (composer), Alwin H. Küchler (cinematographer), Lucia Zucchetti (editor)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A family must figure out how to bid their dying mother (Mirren) farewell…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON GOODBYE JUNE?

Kate Winslet’s directorial debut Goodbye June is many things, but “uplifting” it is not. The premise alone is bound to make anyone feel depressed, especially if they’ve had to go through the same rituals of grief as the characters in this script (by Winslet’s son Joe Anders), and given that it’s also technically a Christmas movie it fits alongside the more uplifting seasonal classics like Schindler’s List does next to Hook.

To the movie’s credit, it maintains that bleak tone throughout the whole thing, with barely a light-hearted break in between scenes of tears being shed as people lay dying in hospital beds. But what it sacrifices is tight plotting and character engagement, both replaced by saccharine sadness and endless misery that just leaves you feeling deflated rather than truly putting one in the festive spirit.

The film opens with the titular cancer patient June (Helen Mirren) being admitted to hospital after collapsing at home, with youngest son Connor (Johnny Flynn) taking her in with her scatterbrained husband Bernie (Timothy Spall) to get her into surgery. But that does no good, and Connor along with his older sisters, including the career-driven Julia (Winslet), obsessive mother Molly (Andrea Riseborough) and airy-fairy wellness guru Helen (Toni Collette), learns that June’s cancer has spread, leaving her with a short amount of time left to live. So begins a journey for all the siblings as they attempt to resolve past grievances and cope with their impending loss as they try to figure out the best way to say goodbye to their mother, all in the lead-up to Christmas.

So yeah, don’t expect Goodbye June to put you in the same upbeat festive mood as The Muppet Christmas Carol or Elf, unless the goal is to remind yourself and your loved ones that the Grim Reaper does not take the time off for Christmas. For me, it was rather emotionally rough to get through – which is exactly what it wants – because, as someone who has gone through the process of saying goodbye to a dying elderly relative with whom I was particularly close, seeing someone like Helen Mirren look so dishevelled and pale as her character grows weaker by the scene (shout-out to the make-up team for nailing that close-to-death look) was lowkey triggering. I’ve been in the exact same position as the likes of Winslet and Flynn in this movie as they sit by their matriarch’s bedside reaffirming their love before her inevitable passing, and those are moments with my own relative that I replay in my head over and over even years after the fact, so to see that kind of deeply personal vibe replicated on-screen by people I’ve never personally known is bizarre, to say the least.

In fairness, while the film does have a habit of drowning itself in overwhelming misery, it is at the very least earnest enough to recognise its own emotional power. Winslet makes a fine effort for her first directing gig, allowing plenty of time for the characters in Anders’ script to get every drop of emotion out of their systems while still coming across as semi-functional people in their own right. As an actor herself, she of course has a knack for directing fellow actors, and there’s not really a weak spot among the ensemble cast, all doing very well with tricky and sometimes ill-defined characters that often let their own pettiness and selfish desires to have their dying mother all to themselves overwhelm their ultimate intentions.

But not even Winslet’s decent filmmaking skills can fix the fact that this script as a whole is, when put into practise, relatively unbalanced. There’s not really much of a plot here outside of the fact that Mirren’s June is slowly dying and everyone around her must deal with it, and there’s not much that we learn about these characters to really understand the connection that they have with their terminally ill mother, or why some of them don’t even have the desire to be in the same room as each other. The threadbare narrative along with equally thin characters allows the melodrama to fully take over, becoming amplified to the point where after a short while it no longer feels like we’re watching events or people that exist in a relatable reality. Instead, it feels like Anders is trying to replicate what you’d find in a typical Richard Curtis family movie, right down to a somewhat cloying climax involving a nativity play, and the presence of a supporting nurse character whose name literally translates to “angel” (yeah, my eyes are rolling too), all of which is intended to generate some kind of extreme emotional reaction from the viewer, and not much else.

The only reason that it does, at least for me, is because it brings up some fairly tender topics which, like anyone who has gone through or is possibly even going through the process of saying goodbye to beloved family members, hit rather close to home. Because of that, I can’t exactly say that Goodbye June is a movie that you should see if you’re in that grieving mindset, since it’s only going to drudge up tender memories that you’d rather not feel during an upbeat time of year when you’re surrounded by others, unless you have a sadomasochistic desire to be the Debbie Downer of your annual Christmas get-together.

Still, it’s a better streaming-exclusive dysfunctional family Christmas movie than Oh. What. Fun. was, because at least the title for this film isn’t one that you’ll sound like a jackass for saying out loud, though this one is by far going to intentionally make you feel a lot sadder.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Goodbye June is an overly sad and borderline manipulative Christmas family drama that, despite director Kate Winslet’s decent filmmaking and ability to get strong performances out of her fellow cast members, drowns itself too much in sorrow and misery to appeal toward audiences, especially those who are similarly going through grief.