How about just ditching everything and go camping? That’s the idea seventeen-year-old Sam’s father comes up with every year, wanting to spend some time with his growing daughter. This summer, however, things don’t work out quite as Sam imagined.   

India Donaldson’s film has an unusual pace, measured in the steps of Sam, her dad Chris, and his friend Matt, who doesn’t seem to quite know what he’s in for. Sam probably also didn’t expect Matt to turn out to be what he turned out to be. Probably the whole situation would have been different if Matt’s son had gone with them as was planned at the beginning. However, the relationship between the two is much less close than that between Sam and her dad, although they too are gradually growing apart. Or is it just Sam growing up? 

Lilly Collias in the role of Sam takes absolutely all the attention of the viewer. Her face is like a voiceover from a nature film and shows us what is left unspoken, which is what the main character experiences while hiking. There is so much maturity and adulthood in this young girl that she could still bestow it on her father and his friend, and she would certainly have a lot left. This is a film about entering adulthood with the baggage of experience, about entering the world of elders who are closer to children. With every step Sam takes, with every kilometer through the woods, we understand more and more that these two grown-ups (it would seem) men are just old boys in a midlife crisis, for whom their children, or anything or anyone who isn’t them, doesn’t matter.   

And sometimes, like Sam, we get to a point when the adult world seems to suck, and then there’s nothing left to do but move on, hoping that the view at the top will reward us for the hardship of the trek. The screening of Good One is a tremendous lesson in looking critically at adulthood and a moment to reevaluate one’s choices with a view to what kind of parent one would like to be. 

Kinga Majchrzak