Late Fame, which premiered a yr in the past this month on the Venice Film Festival, is a gem. It is a film about, amongst different issues, discovery and rediscovery. It could also be a yr after critics first noticed this film that I’m solely simply discovering now because it begins its theatrical engagements, but when ever there was a beguiling and enlightening movie hiding in plain sight, it’s this one from director Kent Jones (Diane) and Oscar-nominated screenwriter Samy Burch (May December).
Based on Arthur Schnitzler’s 1890’s novella, Burch has modernized it and modified the Vienna setting to New York City’s Soho district, a once-bustling enclave for artists and poets and now one thing fairly completely different. Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) has labored for the publish workplace for 37 years, however within the late ’70s he was a printed poet with a quick dance with notoriety, a few articles written about his modest paperback, now relegated to the again cabinets of a dusty non-public bookstore, if you may even discover it there. Meyers (Edmund Donovan), the chief of a younger group of males with respect for many who got here earlier than and whose little salon competes with “influencers” tied to their iPhones in the identical house, certainly has found Saxberger and intends to make him the group’s subsequent venture, an excavation of greatness someway handed over however ripe for renewal.
Setting out to seek out Saxberger, he encounters this modest man whose present social interactions are with blue-collar colleagues on the native bar and a peaceable existence in his humble residence. Friends solely know Ed as a fellow postal employee, actually not as a person who as soon as wrote poems with the reward of Frost. But that was one other life, one other time, and so when Meyers invitations Ed to his group it’s met with some resistance. He can’t even fathom how this man even might discover his guide, a lot much less wish to reward it.
Nevertheless he reveals up, and thus begins his relationship with the self-called Enthusiasm Society, a gathering of twentysomething admirers, if not a lot else, who name themselves intellectuals and reject expertise in favor of artwork and poetry. Indeed their recognition of him as a sort of genius ultimately wins over Ed, who begins to recollect the love for creativity that after drove his life in a really completely different period, a misplaced New York the place artwork was prized.
And there is also Gloria (Greta Lee), the older feminine pal of the Enthusiasm Society, an actress and singer and considerably tragic if flamboyant persona whom in addition they have latched on to. Ed finds one thing in frequent together with her, even when they’re the precise opposites in demeanor. By her very nature she begins to mild up his life, particularly when she agrees to carry out his poetry at a present the Society goes to supply, one promoting new poetry from this misplaced genius.
What makes this movie work in addition to it does, even when impressed by materials from nicely over a century in the past, is first and foremost a very splendid solid. Dafoe continues to be a miracle of an actor, by no means overplaying his hand right here and believably embodying a person resigned to a special life than what may need been — a richly gifted author of way back abruptly reawakened after placing all of it previously. His skepticism is actual and so is his consciousness that these newfound admirers could not see him for who he actually is and what his poetry is actually about.
Lee, so high quality in all kinds of roles from Past Lives to The Morning Show, is great as a girl taking part in a task in life in addition to piano bars. Fortunately she isn’t any stereotype right here as Gloria is a real expertise herself, an distinctive performer as she proves singing Brecht and Weill’s “Surabaya Johnny” in a fantastic second with Ed within the viewers recognizing he’s additionally seeing somebody deserving of late fame herself. Unfortunately she has demons, and Lee is actually gorgeous in a task that runs the gamut. Donovan is ideal because the chief of a bunch who basically adopts artists for their very own sense of price.
Burch’s brilliantly witty, biting and all-knowing screenplay by no means satirizes these characters or seems down on them in a film Jones and his distinctive actors have blessed with sheer humanity and grace.
Producers are Pamela Koffler, Christine Vachon, Mason Plotts, Danny Roberts
H.S. Naji, Jackie Langelier, Taylor Shung and Ethan Lazar.
Title: Late Fame
Distributor: Magnolia
Release date: August 7, 2026
Director: Kent Jones
Screenwriter: Samy Burch
Cast: Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Edmund Donovan, Jake Lacy, Clay Singer, Clark Johnson, Luca Padovan, Arthur Langlie, Graham Campbell, Tony Torn
Running time: 1 hr, 36 minutes
