Goodbye June

It’s a wonderfully raw, moving and funny film about sibling niggles and family heartbreak, filled with biting humour, button-sized observation, noisy kids, frayed tempers and armpit farts. In short, a perfect movie to watch with your family as you contemplate the looming festivities.

A movie manufactured to tug at the heartstrings. That it does so this gracefully and movingly is a testament to Winslet’s understated stewardship and a script by her son, Joe Anders, whose manipulations are as gentle as they are affecting.

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.

If the emotions in Goodbye June are as transparently manufactured as the fake snow that falls outside of the hospital windows, they’re all bundled up in a warm blanket of truth — the truth of how loss has a gravity that can bring a family closer together if they let it.

The whole film feels like a production of calling in favors, as the relatively hotshot cast it drew seems incongruent with its content: a clichéd story of a disordered family over the holidays.

It would be unfair to assign blame to any one performance, or even to Winslet's direction, when the script is the obvious culprit. Story or character hurdles are thrown up and surmounted with the same neatness, sapping them of their impact. The movie becomes so certain of its footing that the two-hour runtime starts to feel like a chore.

Needless to say, the actors are better than the material.

O clichezão que a gente ama, tudo nos conformes, tudo no lugar, entalatado até dizer chega, feito na medida certa para emocionar. Arrancou-me lágrimas sinceras ao final da sessão, muito bonita com a mensagem sempre batida de que família e momentos sempre valem a pena, apesar da finitude da vida.

When death waits in the wings, many of us would like to hope that we can say our goodbyes on our terms, even if timing doesn’t necessarily suit us. But what happens when the circumstances don’t align with our wishes, either? Is it possible to arrange things so that we can say “the good goodbyes” – sentiments profoundly expressed in the song that plays over the closing credits – that we so dearly crave? That’s the challenge put to a middle class London family in the directorial debut from actress Kate Winslet. When family matriarch June Cheshire (Helen Mirren) suffers a setback in her bout with cancer shortly before Christmas (her favorite time of year), she undergoes emergency surgery to save her life. However, even though she survives the procedure, her prognosis is bleak, leaving her with little time to settle her affairs and enjoy whatever lies ahead. But, as someone who’s accustomed to dictating her own fate, June’s in no position to do so this time, leaving matters to her family to handle. And, despite wanting the best for June, for various reasons, they’re also not in the best frame of mind to take on such a difficult task. Such conditions thus call for everyone to work together for the best possible outcome. Their efforts are thus a cross between a devoted labor of love and a painfully daunting challenge, a scenario that puts tremendous pressure on June’s husband, Bernie (Timothy Spall), and her four children, Julia (Winslet), Molly (Andrea Riseborough), Helen (Toni Collette) and Connor (Johnny Flynn). Fortunately, they have help available to them through their partners and children, as well as an attentive and empathetic oncology nurse, Angel (Fisayo Akinade), who not only tends to the needs of his patient, but also to those of all her family members. Together, this finely assembled ensemble works the story with grace, undeniable authenticity and heartfelt emotion (keep those hankies handy), despite a thinly drawn and at times clichéd narrative. The filmmaker toils mightily to make this material look better than it actually is and, truthfully, she succeeds quite capably in a number of segments. However, an underdeveloped back story, incomplete character development, occasionally trite story threads and unsuccessful attempts at comic relief that work only about half of the time keep this picture from fully living up to its potential. It’s encouraging to see that Winslet indeed possesses genuine talent behind the camera, and it’s a good bet she’s got more to show on this front. But, to truly succeed, she needs better material to work with to let those abilities shine. Let’s hope she gets that opportunity again sometime in a better vehicle to show off what she can do.

Kate Winslet, Andrea Riseborough and Toni Collette play sisters who bring their families to the hospital for a few final days with their dying mother (Helen Mirren). Of course, the siblings (including brother Johnny Flynn) have issues with each other and those make up most of the conflict. Much of the script, which was written by Winslet’s son Joe Anders, falls along predictable beats with clichéd conflicts. I was able to guess many scenes pretty early on, although the son’s final revelation was an abrupt and unexpected. Fortunately, first-time director Winslet has assembled this exceptional cast that gives even the tritest scenes more heft. As the father/husband Timothy Spall manages to the most touching moments late in the film (tears guaranteed). With lesser credentials this film would fall squarely in soapy Lifetime movie territory, but Winslet’s cast and direction have classed it up.

If Hollywood keeps making movies like this they will go bankrupt. Not watching. Not explaining. Not apologizing.

What's the point? Why produce a film where we're supposed to watch an elderly woman with cancer suffer and die? This film is tasteless, disrespectful, and unnecessary. A film made by people who can only judge cancer from the outside and have never had it themselves. What utter garbage.