Good One Review
17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) expected company her own age when she agreed to go on a camping trip with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros), and his friend Matt (Danny McCarthy). But after Matt has a falling out with his son, the three of them head off into the forest without Sam’s teenage buddy. Although she’s comfortable enough with Chris and Matt that this doesn’t initially feel like a disaster, over the course of the weekend, their dynamic begins to change.
Good One is the feature debut of writer-director India Donaldson – and after watching it, you can’t hope but hope there’ll be many more to come.
Donaldson immediately establishes a mastery of tone. For some teenage girls, to spend a weekend camping with their dad and his friend would be a complete nightmare. Sam isn’t one of them. From the way they are together, we quickly gather that Sam’s familiar enough with Matt that he’s a long-time family friend. Though all three of them squabble throughout their trip, there’s an essential warmth to their relationship. Because of this, the film is filled with banter that makes it surprisingly funny, at least for the opening act.
And yet while Sam’s more comfortable with the men than most girls her age would be, it’s not all smooth sailing. For one thing, she starts her period just before they leave for the trip – a catastrophe! The way menstruation features in the rest of the movie is one of many great markers of Donaldson’s smart, subtle grasp of gender dynamics. It culminates in a sublime split diopter shot of Sam sorting out her business behind a tree, as the men stand off to the side, looking increasingly impatient. They don’t say anything (they wouldn’t say anything), but this quiet, unbridgeable distance between them feels so symptomatic of their overall relationship.
There are a growing number of stupid comments made across the trip that are easy enough for Sam to put down to her dad and his friend simply being out of touch middle-aged men. Eventually however, a remark is made that is far harder to excuse. The gentle, low-key Good One is about as far removed from a conventional action or thriller as it’s possible to get; on the most basic level, nothing in the film gets any more dramatic than an argument. Nevertheless, Donaldson has choreographed the rising tension so deftly, this ostensibly throwaway remark feels as major as the biggest of blockbuster reveals.
As the troubled heart of Good One, relative newcomer Lily Collias is hugely impressive. All through the movie, Donaldson is intimately attuned to the gap between her character’s faces and the words that come out of them, and that’s truest of all for Sam. While she has plenty of dialogue, with no peers to share her feelings with, it’s her face that tells her story – Collias’s subtle shifts between amusement and anxiety, discomfort and determination, telegraph her complex inner landscape with remarkable eloquence.
It’s a magical performance, at the centre of a quietly monumental movie.
★★★★★
