It cannot be that be a film that has more BDE (Brooklyn Dad Energy) than Goods — you’d have to go to a Park Slope bar at closing time with nothing but The National on the jukebox to find a more concentrated dose of paternal whimsy than in writer-director Indira Donaldson’s debut feature. The fact that this modest, quiet drama is filtered not through a male perspective but that of a 17-year-old girl who witnesses two middle-aged men navigating their midlife crises and sees through their nonsense doesn’t make it any less of a sad, stupid melancholy. This film doesn’t let these guys off the hook, either, and it’s the way Donaldson’s reworking of the masterpiece about guys with feelings in the woods Old joy As a parable about growing up, it strikes a balance between empathy and ruthlessness that makes it both singable and stinging.

The teenage guide on this journey into the woods and across emotional minefields is Sam (newcomer Lily Callias, the discovery of the century), a kid from Bed-Stuy about to head off to college. She’s going on a hiking trip to the Catskills with her dad, Chris (James Le Gros). His longtime friend Matt (Danny McCarthy) and Matt’s son are supposed to accompany her. But the kid cancels at the last minute, and Sam is left to play fifth wheel on what is now an impromptu guys’ weekend. Matt used to be an actor, best known for a small recurring role on a TV series. Now this beardy, slightly loutish artist is just another divorced guy living in the city, wallowing in alcohol and self-pity. He and Chris joke and argue about life choices, consequences and the roads not taken. Sam checks her phone, rolls her eyes and makes the occasional caustic comment. Most of the time she sits there and absorbs everything in silence.

Once the respective corners of this triangular character study are determined, Goods strolls along at his own leisurely pace, taking in the scenery of upstate New York and observing the familiar rituals of old friends and family. You get the sense that these hiking trips form the basis of Sam’s bond with her father — he casually mentions a previous trip to Muir Woods, suggesting they’ve been doing these long nature hikes for a while — and that Chris and Matt have often pushed each other on the edge. Sam is the fifth teenager during their conversations about shattered dreams and bitterness over bad choices. “What would you do in another life?” Matt asks, trying to spark conversation. “I think in this life I still get to choose what I do,” she replies calmly.

It is no understatement to say that so much of the grace and ultimately the emotional resonance of Goods lies in Callias’ performance, and how she turns a symphony of reaction shots into a portrait of a woman caught in the crossfire of middle-aged male malaise. As an actress barely out of her teens, Callias can subtly shift her expressions in ways that hint at seismic shifts beneath the surface (and then, in some cases, immediately hide them). That’s not to say that Le Gros, a true indie OG who seems to get better with age, and McCarthy don’t deliver equally nuanced turns, or that Donaldson’s deft way of weaving deep, complicated backstories into casual conversational details doesn’t benefit the film enormously. That’s because this extraordinary entry in the loss-of-innocence canon, so full of men talking, joking, bitching and moaning, is actually about what goes unspoken—and that’s where Callias comes in. It is truly one of the finest performances in modern American cinema, all about showing and not telling.

Exactly, that “loss of innocence” part: You get the feeling that something is coming, just beyond the postcard landscapes and stunning views of Mother Nature’s bounty, in the film’s slow pace and the tiny twists and turns of people caught up in self-pity. A single sentence drastically changes the tone of both the journey and the film itself, and the audience is left to pick through the wreckage of what turns out to be betrayals – plural, not singular. For something so “small,” the ripples left by that remark are gigantic. The film was always Sam’s film from the start, but a large portion of Donaldson’s film is liberally devoted to Brooklyn Sad-Dad catnip as these two men wax poetic and pathetically about second marriages, second families, and a lack of second chances. Then the loyalty switches completely to Callias’ character, and you feel as if you, like her, are seeing things really clearly. A little too clearly. Goods is, among other things, an ode to a style of filmmaking that seems modest but is nevertheless devastating and human to the core. Mostly, it’s just a damn good film, period.