‘Late Fame’ Review: Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee Sparkle in Kent Jones’s Fizzled Fable [C+] Venice

Sudden fame would feel unnatural for anyone—let alone Ed Saxberger, an aging post office worker turned native New Yorker. One evening, he returns home from work to find Meyers (Edmund Donovan), a young admirer, waiting across the street from his modest apartment building. Meyers reminds him of a long-forgotten book of ‘timeless’ poetry he published years ago, a work Saxberger himself had scarcely thought about since. At first, his hesitance outweighs the flattery, but after Meyers’ gentle persistence, he agrees to meet with the young collective of creatives to discuss his so-called journey as a poet.

Slumped into a mix of mismatched chairs and worn leather sofas, the ex-creative finds himself among a gaggle of pretentious young hopefuls, each claiming a specialty within the craft of writing. Think the bohemians from Moulin Rouge!, only if they came from old money and were enrolled at NYU. The intimate circle is composed entirely of men, save for one: the flamboyant actress Gloria (Greta Lee), whose gaze has a way of making each of them feel like the only person in the world.

To his surprise, Saxberger feels less like the fish out of water he anticipated and more like a natural part of the circle. He proposes reviving an old-school reading event to showcase their work, and from there, he is swiftly indoctrinated. Countless nights are spent in endless conversation circles or wandering the streets of the West Village. As they drop him at home, Saxberger leans out his bedroom window, bids goodnight to an adoring crowd he never envisaged himself belonging to.

The central notion of Kent Jones’s Late Fame is enticing, yet the outcome feels gratingly pedestrian. The shortcoming lies less in Jones’ subdued style of direction and craft like his 2018 film Diane than, surprisingly, in Samy Burch’s script with Arthur Schnitzler. Given that Burch penned May December, one of the most underrated and quietly devastating films in recent memory, it’s baffling that her follow-up would neglect to layer genuine complexity into the narrative. There are flickers of such ambition, but nothing ever fully materializes, bubbling underneath instead of rising to the surface.

From the film’s outset, Saxberger continually ignores calls about his dying brother, a thread that seems as though it should tie into the distracting nature of his creative pretenses, and become something he might ultimately come to regret. Yet nothing ever comes of this fruitless concept, nor of the other fleeting ones introduced and then abandoned. Ultimately, there are no traces of conflict woven in with enough intention to elevate what is otherwise a fairly plain diegesis.

What would have given the film a stronger sense of purpose is a sharper focus on the correlation between fame and ego. It’s clear that the way the youngsters gaze at Saxberger, with a twinkle in their eyes and a spring in their step, begins to slowly feed his ego. His devotion to being the person the group thinks he is demands no sacrifice and yields no lesson. Had he been forced to actually trade the comforts of his everyday life for a few fleeting weeks of modest fame, the result would have been far more compelling.

The performances are where the film finally finds its sparkle. There could hardly have been a better choice for the protagonist than Willem Dafoe, who brings a natural ease and an authentic endearment to the role, despite not being given much range to play with. In contrast, Greta Lee delivers a hammed-up extravaganza as Gloria, serving as the perfect foil to Saxberger’s restraint and seizing the chance to showcase her full range in a memorable cabaret sequence. Spearheaded by Edmund Donovan, the group of young men are often irksome and ostentatious, but that’s precisely what makes them believable.

It’s always a shame to see potential in a project that clearly fails to see it in itself. There is so much that could be explored within Late Fame, especially with such a strong initial setup at hand. Nevertheless, around the midpoint the dust settles, along with the realization that nothing much else is actually going to develop further. It is a low-key film by craft and intent, and there’s nothing wrong with that because it doesn’t require overplayed melodrama. What it does call for however, is some level of acuity in the storytelling that might relieve it of its tedious tendency to drift through the motions without seeking a higher objective.

Grade: C+

This review is from the 2025 Venice Film Festival. There is no U.S. distribution at this time.