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‘Good One’ Review: A Carefully Measured Indie Traces How a Father-Daughter Camping Trip Goes Subtly Awry
India Donaldson's debut 'Good One' is unassuming but perceptive regarding shifting power dynamics as parents reckon with their nearly-adult children.
Writer-director India Donaldson probes that awkward reversal of roles with delicacy and care in her debut feature “Good One,” monitoring the white lies and red flags that emerge over the course of a father-daughter camping weekend in upstate New York. Fiftysomething contractor Chris (James Le Gros) appears to be on great terms with Sam (Lily Collias), his only child, who takes his dad jokes and occasionally clumsy lines of personal questioning with good grace; he’s a sincerely loving and interested parent, and has evidently accepted her out-and-proud queerness without difficulty. Sam’s temperate demeanor may simply be her nature, but Collias’s tautly wired performance shows how it’s also a defense; Wilson Cameron’s camera gazes at her long enough in soft, sun-dappled closeup that we eventually see the clenched muscles behind the calm.
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