Shareeka Epps

In Half Nelson (2006), Shareeka Epps makes us wait for Drey’s answer. The pupil is deciding how much of herself to offer Dan, the teacher played by Ryan Gosling, and Epps lets us see the effort in her guarded responses. We were moved by her watchfulness, because caring about him seems to require a fresh decision each time. She gives the friendship a difficulty that a more openly endearing performance might have smoothed away.

She had already played Drey in the short Gowanus, Brooklyn (2004), returning to the role for her feature debut in Half Nelson. The subsequent work took her into supporting parts: Ray in Rodrigo García’s family and adoption drama Mother and Child (2009), and Lisa Robinson in The Winning Season (2009). My Soul to Take (2010) added horror to that filmography. Credits became sporadic after 2013.

Director Ryan Fleck gives Epps a role that could easily have become an exercise in looking wise while an adult misbehaves. Dan is dependent on crack, and the friendship risks making Drey a child enlisted to put him right. Epps’s guardedness prevents that from feeling like an easy arrangement: we have to consider what she is willing to give him. Her expressions do much of the work; she does not need a speech to make Drey’s caution clear. The film is better for making us attend to her choices rather than simply approve of her kindness.

There are limits to what this quiet performance can repair. Even in Half Nelson, Epps and Gosling must sustain the film through thinly written passages and occasional lulls, and their presence does not make those weaknesses disappear. We would welcome more leading parts that give her time to think, hesitate and make the other actor wait. Choose Half Nelson for an evening when neither person on the sofa needs a friendship to promise that everything will be put right.