Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Dustin Rowles | Film | December 30, 2025
Most of us are familiar with the “Holiday Effect,” the phenomenon in which more people die over the holidays than at any other time of year. It’s real, and the older you get, the more likely you are to have lost a loved one around Christmas, which has a way of coloring the season. It’s not just the magical stretch when you give and receive gifts and Starbucks breaks out the peppermint flavoring; it’s also the time of year you lost a parent or a brother-in-law.
If it has to be that way, the best one can hope for is a “good” death, if there is such a thing. One where the loved one is surrounded by family, where adult children get to say goodbye to a parent, where death, however briefly, brings everyone back together.
That’s the gist of Goodbye June, a real family affair in more ways than one. It stars and is directed by Kate Winslet in her directorial debut, based on a script by her son, Joe Anders, inspired by the death of Anders’ grandmother and Winslet’s mother. It’s not the most compelling directorial effort, but it is sure-handed and touching, a soft weeper well suited to the holiday season.
Helen Mirren plays June, who collapses in her home on an early December morning. She’s rushed to the hospital, only to learn that her cancer has spread and that she has just a couple of weeks left. Her adult children, who have clearly drifted apart over the years, reunite to be with her in her final days. There’s Julia (Winslet), the oldest and most outwardly successful; Molly (Andrea Riseborough), a stay-at-home mom married to a loving buffoon (Stephen Merchant); Helen (Toni Collette), the New Age, crystal-loving sister; and the youngest, Connor (Johnny Flynn), who is closest to June and serves as the emotional glue holding the family together. June’s husband, Bernie (Timothy Spall), is largely doddering and withdrawn, seemingly lost in a fog of denial.
That’s the setup. The film mostly unfolds in the hospital, where family members bicker and reconcile, reminisce, and keep June company as she works from her hospital bed to reconnect with her children and, just as importantly, reconnect them with one another before she dies.
It’s not immensely dramatic, and to Winslet’s credit, she doesn’t yank at the heartstrings so much as gently tug at them. The film is lovely and mostly restrained, anchored by a particularly fine performance from Helen Mirren, who embraces the small humiliations and quiet grace of dying, and in doing so makes Goodbye June feel less like a tearjerker and more like a tender act of remembrance.
