“Coming of age” is one of those terms that just about everybody instinctively understands, but few can likely define. Broadly speaking, the phrase can be used to describe nearly any bittersweet story about children or teenagers, but surely there must be something more to it than that. We understand that “coming of age” connotes a certain trade-off of innocence for maturity, a greater understanding of one’s place in the world which, necessary though it may be, is rarely very much fun to experience. Typically, a coming-of-age story takes place over a particularly meaningful stretch of time, and often involves a number of kids learning their place in relation to one another. There’s only one kid in Good One, the remarkably assured directorial debut from India Donaldson, and the narrative is confined to a single weekend rather than an entire summer. But if “coming of age” has any meaning at all as an action, one can only determine that our young protagonist experiences it.
The kid is Sam (newcomer Lily Collias), and the weekend is a camping trip in the Adirondacks with her father, Chris (James LeGros), and his best friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy); the trip was supposed to include Matt’s teenage son as well, but he stays behind following a last-minute family blow-out. As the trio sets out, the contours of the relationship between the two men are instantly apparent. Chris, a reasonably successful businessman, is the straightman; Matt, a failed sitcom actor, is the buffoon; both are divorced, and they bicker in the way that only lifelong friends do. Sam, for her part, is sullen in the way that all seventeen-year-olds are sullen, but she clearly loves her dad and “uncle,” and will even join in their jokes with a little prying– in other words, she’s a good one. She rolls her eyes, but we sense that she genuinely enjoys their company and listening to the rhythms of their banter.
At least, up until a pivotal moment at the end of the third act when, in the deliberately vague words of the official plot description, “something happens that alters Sam’s perception of the men and her place in their orbit.” The thing that happens is not a “twist” in the Shyamalanic sense of the word, nor does the film shift gears into thriller territory (despite the skittering Hereditary strings of the trailer). But Donaldson does such a masterful job of building to this moment, and making sure we feel it, that it would do both film and audience a disservice to describe it in detail here. This, of course, presents a problem for me as a critic, as that moment, and its fallout, are the film. I’m going to do my best to talk around it, but if you want to go in completely unspoiled, feel free to check out here and take my word for it that the film is worth seeing.
What I can say is that Good One has, in Lily Collias, one of the great discoveries of the year (IMDb tells me she’s been in one other feature and a handful of shorts, but she’s new enough on the scene that, at the time of this writing, she does not yet have a Wikipedia page). There is a scene, during a campfire heart-to-heart, in which Matt tells Sam, “You’re too young to be so wise.” This is an incredibly risky line to write into a screenplay– if the young actor isn’t up to snuff, the audience may be inclined to agree– but, thanks to Collias, we believe it. Collias speaks at once with easy charisma and raw vulnerability, but the real power of her performance is in her silent stretches; whether hiking in silence or listening to her companions’ conversations, we know exactly how Sam is feeling at any given moment thanks to Collias’ endlessly expressive face. There is a remarkable shot at a pivotal moment in which both Collias’ mouth and the left side of her face are obscured, but the expression in her one visible eye tells us everything we need to know. The so-called “awards season” doesn’t start for another month or so, but I feel confident in saying Collias delivers one of the best performances of the year.
Just as crucial, though, are McCarthy and LeGros. One can easily imagine a version of Good One starring Jack Black in McCarthy’s role as the obnoxious chatterbox, but it would never work; even in his everyschlub roles, Black is so magnetic a performer that we’d never buy him as a washed-up would-be comic. Indeed, one can easily imagine Matt as having once seen himself as a “Jack Black” type, and McCarthy expertly plays the resentment and sadness bubbling under his constant riffing. LeGros, meanwhile, plays Chris as a very specific type of dad, at once “laid back” and impossibly uptight; one senses that he considers himself some stripe of hippie as he packs his trail mix and plans the trip, but he can’t stop himself from scolding his companions and taking work texts. Both actors walk a tightrope; the film wouldn’t work if we entirely hated them, but we also learn, as Sam does, that they are both deeply flawed. These are, in other words, real people, and the film’s discomfort comes from the recognition that you know– and were maybe raised by– these people.
This discomfort, which grows between the characters as the trip wears on, stands in contrast to the sheer beauty of the film itself. Good One is not a period piece (there’s a great gag in which a mountaintop reverie is shattered by a million notifications as the characters’ phones latch onto a signal), but in many ways it feels just as crafted to be a relic of the ‘70s as The Holdovers. Donaldson captures the tranquility of nature with a warm, perceptive eye, and the soundtrack is filled with gentle folk sounds both new (such as the contemporary harpist Mary Lattimore) and old (a devastating cut from the great Connie Converse). Even more notably, the film is underscored by the constant, gentle sounds of nature, bird calls and babbling brooks which run like an ironic counterpoint to the characters’ human conflicts. In the words of another great songwriter, the late Margo Guryan: the river is more understanding than a man.
Is Good One a coming of age story? That’s hard to say; can you pinpoint the moment you “came of age” down to a weekend? Still, I’d wager the answer is yes. This is Sam’s story, the story of a wise teenage girl abruptly becoming wiser– wiser about her lack of power in relation to the people around her, and wiser in the ways in which she’s able to exercise the power she does have. Good One doesn’t offer a concrete resolution, but neither does life; like life, it’s at once gentle and heartbreaking, funny in ways both affectionate and brutal. It offers its young protagonist a hard lesson, but it’s also clear that life will go on– and if that’s not the definition of “coming of age,” I don’t know what is.
Good One
2024
dir. India Donaldson
89 min.
Opens Friday, 8/16 @ Coolidge Corner Theatre
