Early in writer-director India Donaldson’s Good One, during lunch at a diner, 17-year-old Sam (Lily Collias) takes an enormous bite of a burger. “I thought you were a vegetarian,” her father, Chris (James Le Gros), bemoans. She replies that she’s “never been one,” to which Matt (Danny McCarthy), Chris’s oldest friend, incredulously states, “You seem like one.”
The essence of Donaldson’s feature-length directorial debut, which traces this trio’s weekend backpacking trip in the Catskills, is distilled in that seemingly throwaway moment, as this is a film about two adults who spend much time presumptuously ascribing stereotypical behavior to the teens in their midst. Though Sam is on her way to college, about to face the onset of adulthood, her divorced parents barely notice the young woman developing before their eyes. Good One, then, in its glimpse of a generational divide, is less a tale of self-actualization than it is about the precarity of being in that prickly crawlspace leading to maturity, through which teens come to understand that age doesn’t necessarily beget that maturity.
Both Matt and Chris are pathetic in very human ways, though the former’s imperfections are more transparent. He’s on the outs with his family, and we learn that his son has refused to join the trip, presumably out of frustration with a father who seems more concerned with a selfish pursuit of pleasure than paternal responsibility. That leaves Sam awkwardly alone with the old pals whose constant bickering drives her time and time again to her cellphone.
Where Chris is practical and efficient, Matt is free-wheeling and hedonistic. Chris scolds Matt for trying to purchase a bevy of snacks and junk food at a local mini-mart, while Matt teases Chris for his seeming inability to have any modicum of fun. Much of the dialogue in this finely observed film is spoken by Matt and Chris, and ceding the stage in this way to the increasingly antagonistic banter between them works to suggest the inherent sexism that someone like Sam must face in spaces where men and women might come together in public. She finds herself torn between keeping the peace and confronting Matt and Chris for their egotistical behaviors.
All this laser-like focus on such personal dynamics stands in fascinating contrast to the serene regard of the camera for the lush forests that serve as the backdrop for the film’s central drama. Though the dialogue of these early scenes feels relatively innocuous, Good One slowly derives tension from the way Sam remains steadfastly tight-lipped (for one, she’s secretly dealing with the onset of her latest period), while her chaperones reveal more and more of who they are by the moment, their selfishness bleeding out in both word and deed. All the while, Celia Hollander’s eclectically whimsical score seems to warn of possible dangers ahead.
Chris, with whom Sam has a surface-level relationship, and Matt seem unchanging in their ways, though the latter, despite his best efforts to keep his sadness tamped down, expresses his regret over past infidelities and the abandonment of his life as an actor. To help dramatize Sam’s watchfulness of these emotionally blocked men, Donaldson rarely shoots the men straight on, their faces and bodies frequently in the shadows of trees, or in tight and obstructed angles. The film is nothing if not tactile in its textures, firmly and effectively placing us in Sam’s shoes.
As Chris, Matt, and Sam reach the top of a lookout, their respective phones blow up with notifications, a result of an unexpected spot of cellular service. Sam is suddenly reminded of the life at home she’s missing out on, but she quickly puts her phone away and focuses on what’s in front of her, taking photos with her father in an attempt to hold onto the serenity of the landscape’s sweeping beauty. The moment is fascinating for how implicitly it understands how teenagers often find themselves in the difficult position of needing to negotiate the tension that results from being pulled between family, friends, and the promise of the future.
The next day, as the trio makes their descent and enjoy a swim, Good One springs the trap that it’s been quietly laying down up to this point. In one swift moment, the film’s undercurrent of tension vanishes with a single line of dialogue that’s as devastating as it is depressingly ordinary. It’s an act of emotional violence that Good One uses to instinctively and lucidly show how sometimes a coming of age can be thrust upon a person against their will.
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