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Times
20-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Gone One review — a tender twist on the woman-goes-hiking film
This tender and rewarding debut from India Donaldson, the daughter of Roger Donaldson, the director of No Way Out and Cocktail, is instantly one of the great 'women go hiking' movies. You know the drill — woman treks into the wilderness in order to grapple with a personal crisis that will be sublimated into a conflict with the environment and resolved by the closing credits. Think Reese Witherspoon in Wild, Mia Wasikowska in Tracks and Sheila Hancock in Edie. • Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews This film, however, is all dramatic subtlety and delicate character arcs, eschewing formula at every turn. The main draw is a star-making turn from the 20-year-old newcomer Lily Collias, who plays
Irish Times
15-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Good One review: This low-key coming-of-age drama is a sneaky revelation
Good One Director : India Donaldson Cert : None Genre : Comedy Starring : Lily Collias, James Le Gros, Danny McCarthy Running Time : 1 hr 29 mins India Donaldson's Good One is a sneaky revelation, a low-key coming-of-age drama that deftly sidesteps familiar tropes in favour of keen cringe comedy and emotional precision. Set against the verdant backdrop of the Catskill Mountains, in New York State, the film follows 17-year-old Sam (the remarkable Lily Collias, in a breakout performance) as she joins her father, Chris (James Le Gros), and his long-time friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) on what was supposed to be a four-person hiking trip. When Matt's resentful son bails, Sam finds herself an unwilling third wheel to two middle-aged man babies marinating in nostalgia, insecurities and unacknowledged failures. Spooky campfire tales descend into stories of postdivorce resentment. A meal at a roadside diner culminates in food shaming. 'I've never been a vegetarian,' Sam explains patiently. 'But you seem like one,' Dad replies. READ MORE Under the guise of banter, Matt teases Sam about her queerness; Chris demeans her driving. The passive-aggressive barbs come thick and fast while Sam is left to cook the ramen, dismantle the tent and act as unofficial umpire. Her parentalised status is finally acknowledged in a moment of toe-curling inappropriateness. All subsequent attempts to flag the disconcerting incident are brushed off, leaving the weary heroine to enact a deliciously petty revenge. Donaldson, a first-time writer, director and producer, has written a fiendishly clever script enlivened by a quick-witted ensemble cast. Collias, who can do more with a raised eyebrow than most actors can manage with a soliloquy, brings exasperated pathos to every reaction shot and pregnant silence. The cinematographer Wilson Cameron frames the bickering and multiple microaggressions with serene woodlands, rushing rivers and tranquil hillsides. This sly, observant debut – a critical wow at both Sundance and Cannes last year – channels the bittersweetness of Kelly Reichardt's snappier moments, but from the youthful perspective of an eye-rolling teenager staring into the abyss of male privilege. In cinemas from Friday, May 16th
The Guardian
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Good One review – excellent indie hike movie is intelligent and humane
Road movie and coming-of-age are accepted genres; maybe hiking-through-the-forest deserves equal status. It's a distinctive US indie type, coloured by the sun-dappled green foliage, flavoured by the unemphatic presence of both beauty and danger. And heading for … what? An escalating series of scary moments, or just a low-key crescendo of epiphanies or emotional confrontations? Middle-class New Yorkers can journey through the wilderness in the movies but, unlike in John Boorman's 1972 film Deliverance, they may encounter only the inner hillbillies of their own anxiety and discontent. This excellent film from first-time director India Donaldson is a smart, sympathetic and terrifically acted drama about 17-year-old Sam – an outstanding performance from Lily Collias – who agrees to go on a hiking trip in the Catskill mountains with her gloomy divorced dad Chris (played by James Le Gros) and his buddy Matt (Danny McCarthy), a failed actor who shares his friend's marital status (divorced), his portly body type, his receding hairline and his habit of exhaustedly cracking wise about the awful way their lives appear to have worked out. This trip was supposed to have included Matt's stroppy teen son Dylan (company for Sam, presumably) but he has pulled out after a quarrel with Matt – so now, a little weirdly, it's just the two ageing guys and the teenage girl in what promises to be a non-bonding adventure before Sam heads off to college, a kind of platonic Jules-et-Jim or Butch-and-Sundance and Katharine Ross dynamic, only it's just a vacation. Or is it? Donaldson sets a low-key tone of banter and backtalk, in which Sam has to ride in the back of her Subaru, making herself carsick by checking her phone and annoying her dad by asking if she can drive; he finds it annoying because she is actually a better driver than he is. Goofy Matt shows himself to as incompetent at hiking as he is at managing the rest of his life, and as they chat by the campfire under the stars, Matt is quietly awed by the wise, insightful way Sam sums up his problems and predicts how the rest of his life could well go. It's a lovely moment – and then the mood goes terribly wrong. Another kind of director might have cranked the dial way up at this crisis in her relationship with both Matt and Chris but Donaldson decides to let it go, just as Sam effectively lets it go and the mood recedes calmly back to normality. It is subtly climactic, as if in a short story, and you can see how Sam, as she gets into her 20s and 30s, is going to look back on this as a strange last-moment-of-youth event. (I almost wondered if we were going to get a flash-forward of older Sam looking back on it.) In some ways, the father-daughter theme reminded me of Debra Granik's 2018 Leave No Trace, and I wonder if Donaldson has taken a little inspiration from that film. It is very intelligent and humane, and what a great performance from Collias. Good One is in UK and Irish cinemas from 16 May.
