Dir: Kate Winslett, UK/US, 2025, 114 mins

Cast: Helen Mirren, Kate Winslett, Timothy Spall, Toni Collette

Review by Carol Allen

Kate Winslett’s directing debut is the sort of Christmas family weepie type story, which might once have been a low budget Christmas afternoon tv offering.

But with Netflix money behind it, a top flight cast, Winslett’s years of experience in the movie business and a creditable script by first timer Joe Anders, Winslett’s son by director Sam Mendes, it’s a lot classier than that.

As Christmas approaches June (Helen Mirren) collapses and is taken to hospital with terminal cancer. The crisis brings her four adult children together and as they struggle to come to terms with their imminent loss, a whole bunch of old, unresolved issues and family conflicts emerge.

Leader of the pack is Julia (Winslet), successful career women juggling work with marriage and family, whose younger sister, stay at home mum Molly (Andrea Riseborough) has relied on her elder sis to help her out but resents her for it. Then there’s flaky yoga teacher Helen (Toni Colette), who’s now facing partnerless pregnancy and their still living at home adult baby brother Connor (Johnny Flynn) who still needs his mummy.

Julia and Molly’s husbands don’t get much of a look in during the course of the story, though their assorted children are well to the fore. June’s scruffy husband Bernie (Timothy Spall) is resented by Connor as not being there enough for June, though in one very moving scene, Bernie reveals just how much he loves and needs his wife

Helen Mirren holds it all together both as a character and an actress. She’s played elderly mums before but here she is pretty magnificent and almost unrecognizable under the “imminent death” make up. June is determined at all costs to get her family properly reconciled and in order and to die on her terms. A tough but loving lady, made totally convincing by the actress.

Towards the end the film does however veer very close to a sentimental wallow in its actual Christmas Day sequence with the whole family taking part in a nativity play for the benefit of June. But Winslett the director, relying on her team of seasoned performers, just about pulls it off.