DAN WEBSTER:
Most of us reach an age where we look at our parents and wonder who and what they are. It’s a natural aspect of individuation, the process whereby we begin to define ourselves separate from the attitudes and opinions of those who raised us.
And while it isn’t always a comfortable transition—in fact, it can be quite troubling—it is necessary. Of course, some of us will end up thinking and feeling much as our parents do. Others of us won’t. All of us, though, need to find our own path to maturity.
Sam, the young woman played by Lily Collias in first-time writer-director India Donaldson’s film Good One, is on the cusp of adulthood. About to head off to college, she has no answer when asked how she feels. And that might be her honest reaction, being clueless about something she has yet to experience.
More likely, though, it’s because the person asking is her father, Chris (played by James Le Gros). She’s a bit surprised by the question, she tells him, mainly because it’s the first one he’s posed to her—at least it’s the first one he’s asked while on the 3-day backpacking trip that the two them are taking with Chris’ longtime friend Matt (played by Danny McCarthy).
No surprise there, though. Chris may be a caring father, but he’s also more than a bit self-absorbed, the kind of guy who’s most comfortable when he’s in control. And who, when he feels that others around him aren’t adhering to his officious ways of doing things, won’t hesitate to correct them.
For his part, his friend Matt often needs correcting, whether it’s because he has brought too much of the wrong gear, forgot to bring a sleeping bag and keeps snacks in his tent despite the threat of bears.
In some ways, Sam is the adult of the trio. She shows all the traits of a teenager—obliging her father’s demands with impatience, spending time on her cellphone—but, too, she carries her share of the weight, helps set up the campsites and listens to the men banter both with curiosity and a youthful sensibility not yet jaded by middle-age angst and regret.
The conceit that writer-director Donaldson uses in making her film is to avoid, as much as possible, offering exposition. In a typical mainstream film, either an off-screen narration or extended dialogue between characters would explain everything the filmmaker wants us to know about what is going on.
Not that we don’t learn things. For example, Matt’s son was supposed to go on the trip, too. But upset with his dad for divorcing his mother, the boy refused the invitation. And this becomes just another litany, among several others, that makes Matt out to be a forlorn soul—a guy quick to laugh at life but just as quick to mourn the bad choices he’s made.
We learn about Chris as well, that despite his overweening attention to detail he has work obligations that he isn’t taking seriously—maybe to his detriment. That he, too, carries misgivings about his own divorce. And that, at a basic level, he doesn’t know how to talk to his own daughter.
Sam sees all this, as do we. But the main way Donaldson shows us what Sam is thinking is to focus her camera on the young woman’s face. And, fortunately, Collias’ acting ability is enough to give us at least a hint of what she is feeling.
The other mainstream-movie trope that Donaldson avoids involves a sense of threat—that perhaps something is lurking in the woods that poses danger. But the only discomfort that Sam is faced with comes in the form of a seemingly offhanded invitation that she, naturally enough, finds uncomfortable. And her discomfort is compounded when her father fails to take her concerns seriously—an attitude that Sam repays with a perfect act of teen retribution.
Understanding what Good One is trying to say, then, requires a reading between the lines. Donaldson depends more on what isn’t said—the sound, say, of a babbling brook or a shot of a butterfly sunning on a rock—than she does on anything emanating from an actor’s mouth.
It’s in that kind of atmosphere that young Sam finds herself on the path to her own future—one that’s sure to be filled with its own kinds of challenges.
For Spokane Public Radio, I’m Dan Webster.
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Movies 101 host Dan Webster is the senior film critic for Spokane Public Radio and a blogger for Spokesman.com.