Kate Winslet’s directorial debut may find itself being compared with Ronan Day-Lewis’s recent fitful Anemone. Like Daniel Day-Lewis, Winslet has offered herself as lead for a production written by her twentysomething son. Unlike DDL, she grabbed the megaphone and folding chair for herself.
There is not much else to connect the projects. Whereas Anemone was oblique, dense and expressionistic, Goodbye June is messy, humanistic and shamelessly sentimental. There are, thanks not least to the presence of Timothy Spall, a few flavours of Mike Leigh early on, but Joe Anders’s screenplay soon sinks into a fuzzy mess of warm hugs and cheap epiphanies.
It’s coming up to Christmas, and a warring Bristol family (only Stephen Merchant, as the son-in-law, has the right accent) are approaching, from different directions, the imminent death of their mater familias (Helen Mirren as the titular June).
Julia (Winslet), June’s daughter, is living an apparently perfect, well-heeled life. Her less polished sister, Molly (Andrea Riseborough), carries such resentment that she insists a rota be drawn up so her hospital visits do not clash with Julia’s. “I love them very much,” June says despairingly. “But twice as much when they love each other.” Their father, Bernie (Spall), is drowning in denial.
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On this evidence, Anders, whose dad is Sam Mendes, is not yet a master of nuanced characterisation. Everyone fights against a single signature trait. Poor Toni Collette, as the maddest sister, is saddled with a one-note version of the same irritating hippie she played in About a Boy more than 20 years ago. Not managing much forwards momentum, the film simply flings them all into a pot and allows them to bounce randomly against one another for two hours.
Yet these are all fine actors, and every now and then they get the opportunity for a Wimbledon-quality rally. The final showdown between Riseborough and Winslet springs no surprises, but, by golly, the two bash the ball back and forth with some gusto.
One other thing. This is a proper Christmas film of the old school: tinsel, Nativity, redemption, closing carols. There is every chance it could play well once a year until the heat death of the universe. After all, it’s better than The Family Stone, and people seem to think that grim 2005 yawnfest is worth watching every December.
In cinemas from Friday, December 12th; streams on Netflix from Christmas Eve
