With the gripping father-daughter drama ‘Good One,’ a first-time feature filmmaker triumphs and a star is born

It takes a certain kind of person to get excited about eating dehydrated peanut butter: Chris (James Le Gros) is that guy, and he’s transferred his love of roughing it — as well as his alpha-dog packing strategies — to his teenage daughter, Sam (Lily Collias), who’s been accompanying him on various rustic excursions for as long as she can remember.
There is, however, a wrinkle in the pair’s latest daddy-daughter odyssey: Chris has invited his best friend, Matt (Danny McCarthy), a chatty, lachrymose actor whose own son would rather be caught dead than hike through the Catskills with his old man. Matt, who arrives for the trip wearing denim, clearly isn’t prepared for what awaits him in upstate New York; the question is not whether this tenderfoot is going to weigh the group down, but how badly.
The camping-trip-from-hell setup of India Donaldson’s debut feature, “Good One,” promises a wry comedy of manners — an intergenerational standoff between two middle-age weekend warriors and a queer kid on the verge of college. But that’s only half the story.
It’s a fine line between bug-spray-soaked annoyance and genuine heartache, and there are moments when the characters cross it far less sure-footedly than they amble over rocky terrain. The ensemble’s triangular configuration allows for all kinds of shifting personal dynamics and power plays.
Depending on the scene, Donaldson’s script either interrogates embedded gender dynamics — with the two men plunging into mutual sob stories while Sam sits there stone-faced and skeptical — or else bores into paternal pathos as Chris (unintentionally) lords his apparent superiority as a family man over his divorced and depressed BFF.
That all these pressurized tensions come to a head late in the proceedings is predictable, and also inevitable: “Good One” isn’t quite skilful or original enough to transcend its schematic structure. But it’s still a very fine piece of work, starting with its lovely, richly textured cinematography (by Wilson Cameron) through its precisely modulated ensemble acting, which sidesteps showboating and false notes from beginning to end.
If the reliably moody, naturalistic presence of Le Gros calls to mind the similarly outdoorsy dramas of his frequent collaborator Kelly Reichardt (a high compliment), McCarthy’s dilapidated schmuckery evokes no less than vintage Philip Seymour Hoffman — he’s believable as a broken man who’s only partially succeeded in piecing himself back together.
As for Collias, a breakout star who appears in nearly every shot, she’s got the rare quality of emotional translucence. No matter what she’s doing — and she often isn’t doing much more than trudging quietly through the trees — her emotions shimmer and ignite our empathy; a scene in which she decides whether to take a swim in a mountain stream with her companions bristles with wordless, inchoate anxiety.
When Matt tells Chris, regarding his talented and wise-beyond-her-years daughter, that he has a “good one,” it’s a line riven with all kinds of ambivalence and ambiguity — feelings that become even more complicated in retrospect. It’s also the perfect assessment of Collias.