‘Late Fame’ Review: Kent Jones’s Amiable New York City Poet Drama Pulls Its Punches

Kent Jones’s Late Fame follows one of the perhaps exceedingly few Gothamites who refuse to let urban development or gentrification disrupt the simple pleasures of their day-to-day existence. One such New Yorker is Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe), who moved to SoHo in 1977, long before influencers and high-end retail shops took over the neighborhood. Back then, Ed participated in the thriving downtown arts scene and published a book of poetry, Way Past Go. But as the years progressed and his career stalled, he moved on—just as SoHo did. Gravitating toward stability over artistic satisfaction, Ed settled into a simple life.

When we’re first introduced to Ed, he’s working as a postal clerk and spending his free time playing pool at his favorite local dive bar. One day, he’s recognized at his doorstep by Meyers (Edmund Donovan), an eager devotee and the ringleader of a would-be symposium of aspiring artists. The Enthusiasm Society, as the group dubs itself, relishes in the act of rediscovery, but it quickly becomes clear that their joy derives mainly from what making a cultural excavation says about them, and less about what it can do to revive a person’s long-dormant career.

At one point in Late Fame, Gloria (Greta Lee), the Enthusiasm Society’s token woman, reveals the open secret of how the group can even exist: the inherited wealth that its members have yet to develop a sense of shame around. They’re Manhattan-based artists because they’re among the few who can afford to be. But Gloria highlights more than just the homogeneity of the group’s class makeup. As a working actress who throws herself with reckless abandon into even something so small as a rendition of Brecht and Weill’s “Surabaya Johnny” at a sleepy cabaret joint, Gloria understands that being an artist involves more doing than talking.

As a film about the tortured process of artistic creation, Late Fame subverts expectations in one notable respect. Samy Burch’s screenplay, adapted from Arthur Schnitzler’s 1895 novella, sets the stage for a narrative of rebirth upon Ed’s rediscovery. As the Enthusiasm Society prepares for a big public exhibition, it hopes that a reading from the lapsed poet will drive interest around the event. But any prospects of Ed rediscovering his creative spark are quickly dashed, as he finds himself too entrenched in his current routine to reconnect with his former craft.

From there, though, any and all tension that that film has built up evaporates. Late Fame manages to coast for a while on Dafoe’s performance, which exudes his characteristic gracefulness, and Jones’s direction is scrupulously sincere, but neither the actor nor the director is aided by a script with a limited perspective on the characters, especially Ed.

A kiss shared between Gloria and Ed midway through Late Fame invites our speculation about a romance between them, but the script abandons that thread, suggesting a lack of commitment on the part of the filmmakers. Their desire to resist easy storytelling paradigms around artists is admirable, especially in their avoidance of lionizing Ed or satirizing the Enthusiasm Society, but without punching up or down, the film feels like it’s pulling punches altogether.

Though it offers no explicit commentary on the state of downtown Manhattan, this unobtrusive film’s glance into contemporary SoHo does capture something of the experience of ambling its cobblestone streets. Ed straddles coexisting incarnations of the neighborhood, where the scrappier remnants of its recent past are still visible beneath the commercialized bohemia that dominates its surface. His borderline spectral presence, gently moving through the landscape, highlights the presence of absence in the film as much as in the city.