Film

Good One (2024)

India Donaldson

5/5

Family relationships are never simple

Ambiguous family dynamics are drawn with precision and sensitivity in this accomplished debut by India Donaldson. This film is indeed a good one, although the title refers to something altogether different.

The young woman Sam goes on a camping trip with her father Chris and his friend Matt. During the trip we slowly discover that Sam’s parents are divorced and that her father has a new young family. Matt also seems in the throes of divorce with his son refusing to come on the trip. This skews the balance for Sam where she finds herself without a potential ally facing two middle-aged men set in their ways.

Chris is an experienced and organised hiker who always knows best. Matt is his polar opposite, a loose cannon who even forgets to bring his sleeping bag. The juxtaposition of the two friends brings to mind Alexander Payne’s Sideways. Sam is quiet and reasonable but visibly frustrated from the beginning by her father’s expectations and behaviour. The scene is set for a peaceful but uncomfortable weekend in the glorious scenery of the Catskills where the three characters all try to get along, but the mix is grating from the start.

Sam obviously wants to make an effort to spend time with her father, who it appears has taught her all she knows about camping. It is clear however that there is a history of disagreement and resentment due to the divorce and probably many other ongoing tensions. Sam lives with her girlfriend and it is left to the viewer’s imagination to speculate how Sam’s coming out might have played out within the family. My guess would be that it was met by indifference, with parents absorbed in their own grievances and desires.

Chris asks Sam one single question about herself during the whole weekend and at this point she is already stewing about a highly inappropriate remark from Matt which her father dismisses offhand and refuses to condemn. She then refuses to continue to be a good girl from the film’s title and the viewers are with her on that. Some family reunions just need to be cut short for everyone’s mental wellbeing.

The acting is understated and rich in life-like opacity. James LeGros as Chris and Danny McCarthy as Matt spar in the way old friends do, keeping to their assigned roles within their friendship. Lily Collias as Sam gradually builds her character as a woman on the verge of adulthood, emotionally mature in some ways, but still obeying her father and looking up to him. When Matt, out of despair and genuine need, asks Sam to tell him what she thinks his life would become, her surprisingly frank and elaborate answer reveals her pain, as well as wisdom and wit. It is probably her longest line in the film.

Good one is all about the narrative and the gradual exposing of characters and their histories, as if the viewer was another member of the camping party. The script is eminently believable with its slow and well-paced tension and realistic dialogue. It all seems very simple and calm on the surface, but Donaldson makes you feel the discomfort throughout, leading you to expect things to turn at any moment. The ending is appropriately unfussy and a touch sudden, cleanly rounding-off the storyline.