Late Fame
Director – Kent Jones – 2025 – US – Cert. 15 – 96m
*****
A reclusive New York postal worker who published volumes of poetry years ago becomes involved with a contemporary circle of rich young writers and creatives – out in UK and Ireland cinemas on Friday, September 4th
New York postal worker Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) lives a quiet life, with a regular, once a week night out playing pool with his mates. He regularly gets answerphone messages from his sister telling him his brother doesn’t have long left to live, and he really should come and visit before it’s too late.
Minding his own business, he’s walking through the park when he’s accosted by a young man. It emerges that Saxberger published volumes of poetry in the 1970s, and while never commercially successful, he is held in high regard by those who pay attention to such things. The young man takes a chance and invites Ed to a meeting of writers, poets and actors. Ed, flattered, says, why not?
So it is that Ed finds himself attending meetings of this artistic circle, run by Meyers (Edmund Donovan from Civil War, Alex Garland, 2024) which consists mainly of young rich kids whose parents are funding them. However, there’s an outlier who comes to light via a question as to why all the members are male – a mysterious actress named Gloria. When the latter shows up (Greta Lee from Tron: Ares, Joachim Rønning, 2025; Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse, Joachim Dos Santos, Kemp Powers, Justin K. Thompson, 2023; Past Lives, Celine Song, 2023), she proves to be an enigma. No-one seems to know anything about her, and apparently she likes to keep it that way.
One thing leads to another with the group, and Ed soon finds himself talked into taking part in a show of readings and performances. The plan is for Gloria to read one of his poems out loud. Preferably a new piece, although he hasn’t written anything for years and isn’t sure if he still has it in him.
Meyers, meanwhile, wants to fix him up with an agent to finally gain him the attention he deserved back in the 1970s, when it didn’t happen. He suggests Ed write his memoirs. Ed doesn’t object to the idea, exactly, but nor is he particularly enthusiastic about it.
At the same time, Ed finds himself drawn towards the enigmatic Gloria, who encourages his attentions. She is older than the young men of the group, and may well not be monied like most of them. On one occasion, she drags him to a club where she performs an intoxicating musical number (Brecht and Weill’s “Surabaya, Johnny,”) on a small stage in front of an enthusiastic male audience.
Ultimately, though, a devastating scene reveals unexpected aspects of her background. When she later turns up for the evening of readings, she is much the worse for wear, and probably incapable of performing his reading…
Based on a book by nineteenth century writer Arthur Schnitzler, whose works have furnished material for, among other movies, Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999) and La Ronde (Max Ophuls, 1950), the script is a razor sharp, contemporary adaption by Samy Burch (who wrote Coyote vs. ACME, Dave Green, 2026; May December, Todd Haynes, 2023).
In the hands of director Kent Jones, the resultant script proves a dream vehicle for Dafoe whose performance as Ed is unforgettable. Ed may have once been a great talent, but these days seems content to go with the flow of the push and pull of anything that life throws at him. Dafoe makes us believe it when Ed is pulled / drifts into Meyer’s’ circle, where you suspect he doesn’t really belong.
This is in contrast with Ed’s relationship with his pool-playing friends, who accept him for what he is, and he them… at least until the point where poetry comes up, and he suggests they wouldn’t really understand it, which gets their goat. Somehow, though, Ed weathers the storm and keeps in touch with his peers.
Greta Lee as Gloria gets less time on screen, but makes an indelible impact from the moment she first appears, a mysterious persona about who everyone in the audience wants to know more than she is willing to reveal. Among her most memorable moments is turning up unfit for anything for the performance evening, being carried to the side of the stage and then somehow delivering the perfect performance of a monologue, an actress at the height of her powers, before lapsing into a stupor the moment the stage piece is over and she’s exited.
The aforementioned scene of devastation occurs when Ed turns up unannounced at her front door. No, she says, it’s not a good time. The makeup and mystique are gone; she is an ordinary person in a horrible domestic situation about which everything that has gone before has offered not one single clue. In a second, one’s whole perception of the character is transformed.
Among the many reasons to see this movie, the extraordinary performances by Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee sit right at the top of the list. A real treat: don’t miss.
Late Fame is out in cinemas in the UK and Ireland on Friday, September 4th.
Trailer: