‘Good One’ review: A tense-father daughter hike tests the bonds of trust
A backpacking trip becomes imbued with simmering tensions in Good One, India Donaldson’s subtly gripping feature debut about a father and daughter at odds. Told through the eyes of a queer teenager on the verge of adulthood, the film centers the kind of gruff, occasionally uncomfortable heterosexual machismo around which camping can thrive, but it grounds its notions of clashing genders and generations in a precisely wound family story.
It is, in essence, an adventurous thriller in which the adventure is a breezy trek at a slight elevation, and the thrills comprise mere glances. But rarely has a film conferred such monumental weight and importance upon the perspective of a teenage girl. Whether anything happens through most of Good One depends on the point of view, though by the end of the movie’s brisk 90 minutes, Donaldson’s arch direction places Murphy’s Law in its crosshairs. Practically anything can happen, and beneath the surface, everything does.
What is Good One about?
After opening with calming shots of a burbling stream in the woods — a promise of sorts, towards which the movie’s city-dwelling characters are drawn — Good One introduces New York high schooler Sam (Lily Collias) and her uptight father Chris (James Le Gros). As they pack for their trip to the Catskill Mountains, Sam spends time with a female friend of hers on whom she clearly has a crush, while Chris meticulously fits rectangular snacks and supplies into a cylindrical jar until there’s no more room left.
Chris, who’s divorced from Sam’s mother, is remarried and has a wailing newborn; he sees this trip as an escape from frustrating domestic mundanities, and tries to exert a sense of control over every aspect. Sam, meanwhile, goes with the flow. What she wants out of this hike isn’t certain, but she isn’t opposed to the idea of it in general — or, it would appear, to new opportunities. Both characters exist at vastly different stages of transformation in middle age and teenhood; for Sam, college applications loom.They’re soon joined en route to the Catskills by Chris’ old friend Matt (Danny McCarthy), a more frustrated and far less-prepared accomplice in a transition of his own. Divorced as well, Matt was meant to bring his teenage son along — a close friend of Sam’s — but a fight between them makes Matt the awkward third wheel to Chris and Sam’s father-daughter bonding, or so it would seem.
Before long, this dynamic shifts as well. Chris and Matt have a brotherly dynamic, and their similarities cause them to fall into a familiar rhythm, though one that’s alienating to Sam. The two men’s dynamic is endearing at times, if occasionally tinged with language that Sam’s generation might’ve long soured on — like calling women “females.” But they are, for the most part, harmless lunks at opposite ends of a comedic spectrum: a man who’s meticulously over-prepared, and a man who wears jeans on a hike and forgets his sleeping bag.
However, what sets Good One apart from the usual crop of men-in-arrested-development American comedies is that Sam is caught in the middle of their straight-man/funny-man shtick, not just as a casual observer but an unwitting participant in their lives, their arguments, and their disagreements. She isn’t just a casual mediator who has fun intervening, but someone whose life is (and has been, for as long as she’s been alive) tied up in theirs. This places her in the awkward position of wanting to help and joke around, but without ruffling any feathers.
As jovial as this dynamic may be, it soon grows fragile. Cracks first begin to appear when a trio of young men set up their own camp nearby, and Sam’s objection to her father in private goes unheard, or at best misunderstood. They grow more pronounced when Matt’s drunken self-loathing veers into territory so discomforting that you might momentarily stop breathing. All the while, the story of Good One lives and breathes through its stellar lead performance.
Good One features some of the best acting this year.
The complexities of Donaldson’s screenplay are owed, in large part, to the fact that Matt and Chris are deeply sympathetic characters. Spending time with them is largely a joy, even if the occasional verbiage of theirs feels retrograde at times.
Chris, for instance, embodies an eager, clownish dad, a protector who builds emotional shields through low-hanging humor and fun factoids. He takes pride in the simplest of things, like the way Sam pours soup (“Isn’t that a steady pour?” he repeats more than once), and while cooking rustic meals, talks about how you “need the bean to meet its potential.” Le Gros leans fully into the goofy persona of a man desperately trying to be one with nature, forcing himself into the groove of camping to the point that anyone stepping a foot out of line or not following his rule book receives a scolding.
However, where Le Gros really taps into Chris is in his refusal to fully see his daughter, despite practically never taking his eye off her. This applies to both men, but where Matt can afford to be disengaged, Chris is never concerned (or even really aware) that Sam is changing her tampons in the open forest when strange men could be nearby. And where a more traditional drama might weave ongoing verbal conflicts into this father-daughter story, Good One paves the path for them through reaction shots from both Le Gros and Collias, building Chris and Sam’s relationship not through communication but through a lack thereof.
Collias, meanwhile, puts on a clinic of concern and self-doubt, as Sam intuits ever-so-slightly weird vibes at several turns. Of course, to break such an intricate story down to a matter of gender binaries would do it a disservice, but it truly does embody the varying ways men and women learn to navigate the world, given their experiences and how they’re socialized.
Right in the middle of this dynamic is the streetwise Matt, who McCarthy fills to the brim with emotions simply waiting to burst forth. The character (a former actor on a mid-2000s procedural, echoing McCarthy’s recurring role on Prison Break) conceals the real ways his failures at fatherhood continue to bother him. Matt casually brushes off these paternal inadequacies, though he always seems to search for answers about what to do, even if those answers come from a high schooler. McCarthy is the movie’s secret weapon, its beating heart and soul — which makes it all the more viscerally impactful when Matt’s comments towards Sam begin skirting the line of appropriateness.
Good One is an unexpected gut punch.
For Sam, who’s nearing the end of high school, navigating the world in the long run means being exposed to it first, then living outside of the comforts and confines of home. This risky adventure is given literal form by Donaldson’s setting: the great outdoors, where practically any scenario could arise when strangers are nearby.
Sam may exist in close proximity to Chris’ protective shadow, but a tragic part of the story is her discovery that this, too, has its limits. No character in the film, not Matt nor any of the young men they come across, has any particularly sinister aura, but the film’s sense of looming unease is born from brief moments and stray dialogue that makes Sam (and the audience) question the intent of other characters, without ever providing answers.
This functions as a kind of filmic plausible deniability, and allows any and every character to simply resume their regular, friendly status quo as though nothing out of the ordinary has happened. And to them, this is indeed the case, whereas to Sam, something definitely has happened. Meanwhile, the plot and dialogue constantly poke and prod at Sam’s sense of equilibrium. That nothing happens in terms of overt genre or thriller flourishes is precisely the point, because the phantom possibilities are unnerving all on their own. From there on out, it becomes a question of who in the film, including Sam herself, will take those emergent possibilities into consideration, and how this will affect the rest of the trip — an unfortunate question she not only needs to ask, but has answered for her in the process.
Good One is ultimately a dialogue-heavy film about a culture of silence. It’s akin to Mira Nair’s Monsoon Wedding in that regard, though it lives at the far opposite end of the cinematic spectrum, unfolding quietly and unassumingly, and sans overt confrontation, until things finally boil over in ways that can’t help but strain even the most pleasant relationships. Its intensity is born not from what happens but the possibility of what could, and the question of whether or not that possibility is enough to change one’s perception of other people, and of the harshness of the world at large.
Sam is essentially forced to come of age before our eyes when witnessing this harshness firsthand. She’s not only exposed to the failures and insecurities of two father figures, but to their indifference to her lived experience in a way that pierces the veil of childhood safety and comfort. Few experiences are more jarring. Donaldson’s deft direction ensures that by the end of the film, much like Sam, we also feel our sense of trust has been shaken as we emerge into the real world.
