By Peter Keough

A buffer between two bruised and only fitfully reflective egos, Sam finds herself in an awkward position, one which becomes increasingly untenable as lines of trust are crossed and power dynamics exploited.

Good One. Directed by India Donaldson. At the Coolidge Corner Theatre.

Lily Collias as Sam in a scene from Good One.

“So we’re all complicit,” says Dave (Danny McCarthy) to Sam (Lily Collias) the 17-year-old daughter of his best friend Chris (James Le Gros) as the three sit around a campfire in India Donaldson’s subtle and assured debut feature Good One. “How did you get to be so wise?”

Indeed. But wisdom for women can be a mixed blessing, as can insight into male hangups and frailties. A buffer between two bruised and only fitfully reflective egos, Sam finds herself in an awkward position, one which becomes increasingly untenable as lines of trust are crossed and power dynamics exploited.

The camping trip starts off awkwardly enough as the engagingly anal Chris fussily selects and packs his rations and sniffs an item of clothing which he passive-aggressively accuses his current, much younger wife of inadequately laundering. Father and daughter then drive to Dave’s brownstone where he is in the midst of a noisy argument with his teenage son, who, no surprise, will not be accompanying them as planned after all.

Nonetheless, the dozing Sam is grumpily evicted from the front seat to the back to accommodate the newcomer. There she becomes a kind of all-purpose back seat driver, an arbiter to the complaints, regrets, resentments, and festering differences the two friends have accumulated over the years of their long relationship, a role she will maintain for most of the rest of the trip. Unlike the pre-adolescent daughter in Annie Baker’s Janet Planet, another recent examination of parent-child logistics by a woman director, Sam has achieved the maturity, tact, and empathy that sets her up as a sounding board for others’ woes and vagaries of judgment.

In the course of the chit-chat we learn that Chris seems to have achieved some professional success as a contractor — in this regard Sam also serves as a moderating voice, toning down a confrontational text he is about to send to a customer. Dave (in his protean performance McCarthy manages to resemble Jesse Plemons, Matt Damon, and Bill Belichick in various stages of distress) started out as a successful actor, became less so, and rebounded as a career counselor instructing other failed actors how to become salespeople. As husbands (or fathers, for that matter), both men have not been role models. The above exchange about complicity occurs after Sam has explained to Chris how both he and his ex-wife – her mother – were responsible for the failure of their marriage.

Meanwhile, Chris and Dave are getting on each other’s nerves, with Sam again in the middle. It comes to a head when Chris blows his top after he finds out that his somewhat corpulent friend (whom he says would have to “work on his core” before he might join them on a speculated hiking trip to China) has been eating snacks after hours in his tent. It’ll attract bears!, he tells him. How dare you endanger my daughter! His outrage is ironic at best, given his own laxness in recognizing — and protecting — his daughter’s needs and security.

As Sam sticks up for Dave and in general shows him compassion, Good One begins to resemble Kelly Reichardt’s Old Joy (2006)  — if Reichardt had included herself as part of the cast in the form of a 17-year-old relationship therapist. Donaldson has readily acknowledged Reichardt’s influence on her work and named her as one of her favorite filmmakers. One can see in Good One the impact not only of Old Joy but also another Reichardt tale of two men in the woods — First Cow (2019), with Sam perhaps in the role of the exploited, nurturing cow.

Despite Chris’s stated fears, however, there are no bears to threaten the hiking party. The only wildlife to be seen are cute critters like slugs and newts and, in a striking image that opens the film and recurs near the end, curious butterflies exploring a mysterious mini-dolmen of piled rocks (shades of The Blair Witch Project). By the time the image makes its second appearance, relationships have drastically, if understatedly, realigned and Sam has grown wiser still – learning that the truest wisdom is the hardest to share.

Peter Keough writes about film and other topics and has contributed to numerous publications. He had been the film editor of the Boston Phoenix from 1989 to its demise in 2013 and has edited three books on film, most recently For Kids of All Ages: The National Society of Film Critics on Children’s Movies (Rowman & Littlefield, 2019).