Good One Review
During the pandemic, director India Donaldson moved back into a Los Angeles home with her father and the teenage children he shared with his third wife. It was this perspective that served as the building blocks for her immensely moving debut, Good One. Told through the eyes of a 17-year-old girl named Sam (Lily Collias), she finds herself on a camping trip with her dad and his best friend.
Where her father, Chris (James Le Gros), seems like the put-together one of the men, compared to the freshly-divorced-and-going-through-it Matt (Danny McCarthy), she soon realizes that both have their issues. Donaldson builds the tension throughout as Sam teeters on adulthood — knowing too much, and arguably, more than the others surrounding her on the camping trip.
Things reach a head when Matt creepily suggests Sam sleep in his tent while her father sleeps in his. It’s a moment where things click for Sam that she is no longer being seen as a teenage girl, even though Matt has a son of a similar age. The film’s title is even pulled from a quote that he tells her father: “You’ve got a good one.”
After alerting her dad about the sexual harassment, he writes off the situation, repeating a similar history of how oblivious he was to the issues that sparked Sam’s mother to divorce him. The familial cycle repeats, passed down by women after hitting a certain age. And the men will continue to bond and protect one another.
Still, Sam does not go down without a fight. Donaldson has her character channel the weight of that pain into each rock she shoves into Chris and Matt’s backpacks, intending to slow their movements during the hike. If she has to suffer with that emotional baggage, so should they.
The cinematography, courtesy of Wilson Cameron, beautifully showcases the nature aspects, providing a calm juxtaposition during all the chaos of the trio’s connections. Good One’s final shot is of Chris placing a rock from his backpack onto the dashboard of the car. “I know” he manages to silently communicate to her. As Sam takes the driver’s seat to return home, she is heading into a new stage of life and an understanding of mutual disappointment, even if we don’t see what occurs on the ride back.
Good One’s appeal and ability to shine as one of the year’s best films rests in the protagonist’s fierceness, even through her most heartbreaking realization: even your family will let you down.
★★★★1/2
Playing as part of the BFI London Film Festival on 9, 10, and 14 October / Lily Collias, James Le Gros, Danny McCarthy / Dir: India Donaldson
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