Two strong lead performances anchor the intriguingly wistful Late Fame

During the day, Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) works at the post office. Once night falls, he often heads to a local pool hall and shoots the breeze with other people his age. It's a quiet life for someone who, when he was young, published some acclaimed poetry. One random day, twenty-something aspiring artist Meyers (Edmund Donovan) encounters Saxberger and recounts to him how much he loves his 70s book Way Past Go. For the first time in ages, Saxberger is a celebrity and an artist in someone's eyes.

Late Fame, which comes courtesy of director Kent Jones and screenwriter Samy Burch, proceeds to chronicle Saxberger joining up with a group Meyers has started called The Enthusiasm Society. This ramshackle gathering of young New York artists fawn over Saxberger, especially the gregarious and eccentric actor Gloria (Greta Lee). As everyone’s bonds deepen, Saxberger is coerced into writing a new piece for a poetry reading event that The Enthusiasm Society is hosting.

Jones and cinematographer Wyatt Garfield frequently imbue Late Fame with a quiet dreamy visual quality. This is especially true whenever Ed Saxberger is alone, wandering the nighttime wintery streets of New York. The camera darts around people, traffic lights, and even the sky as Dafoe’s wonderful voice intones narrative phrases like “can I still write?” on the soundtrack. Another scene conveying dreamlike qualities comes when Saxberger and the Enthusiasm Society members boisterously stroll down a sidewalk together for the first time. They’re clearly laughing and loudly chatting, yet we hear none of it. Don Fleming's melancholy score instead fills up the audience's ears.

In these and other Late Fame scenes, the movie simulates the idea that Saxberger is recounting the past in his dreams. Only fragments of yesteryear (like images but not sounds) fester, yet the emotions he felt endure. One can imagine this whole situation (some young poet stumbling onto him, lauding him as a hero while he’s spent decades in a mailroom) is both so inexplicable and impactful for this man. Of course it would infiltrate his subconscious. Of course he’d recount it. These striking visual and sonic choices are strong on a surface level. However, these dreamlike Late Fame flourishes also quietly submerge moviegoers into both this man’s psyche and a potent sense of melancholy reminiscence.

Executing that ambiance so effectively is a welcome cherry on top of a movie wielding two can’t-miss tools at its disposal. Something would have to go seriously wrong in Late Fame (like Birth of a Nation/Skyline/Gotti bad) for a movie starring Willem Dafoe and Greta Lee not to be slightly compelling. Luckily, this is a well-crafted feature so both skillful performers flourish like plants deposited in ripe soil. For starters, what a gift Dafoe is as an actor. He's so magnificent at deeply externalized performances, like his work in Nosferatu, The Lighthouse, or the Spider-Man movies.

Yet when he needs to play just a normal, understated guy, he’s also terrific (it’s why his Jesus Christ performance is so stirring in The Last Temptation of Christ). Thus, he’s tremendous playing Ed Saxberger. His subtlest physical traits really communicate how withdrawn this man has become at the start of Late Fame. Watching him slowly grow more comfortable and outspoken around the younger Enthusiasm Society members is quite absorbing in Dafoe’s hands.

This actor gets to play opposite Greta Lee for much of Late Fame, a performer who also excels here. Gloria constantly walks, talks, and even breathes like a leading lady from a 40s movie. She’s got a quick wit, snappy comebacks, and confident physicality that would, of course, captivate an older, more unsure soul like Saxberger. Lee’s replication of a Katharine Hepburn/Barbara Stanwyck persona is remarkably detailed and authentic. She gloriously commits to this outspoken portrayal, which makes Lee’s execution of rawer Gloria aspects extra shattering.

These performances inhabit a movie that happily ensures its plot avoids an especially lazy route. Burch's script (adapted from an Arthur Schnitzler novella of the same name) could've easily generated conflict between the Late Fame characters by devolving into a "kids these days" diatribe. Instead, the feature goes into more specific storytelling territory. That includes partially defining Saxberger’s comfort with these younger artists through how much they remind him of poets he hung out with decades earlier. The Enthusiasm Society members eschew technology, talk about mid-20^th century writers, and even have typewriters prominently displayed in their homes. They’re not vessels for Jones and Burch to lament about how “different” twenty-somethings are now.

Instead, Late Fame problems emerge through incongruity over varying levels of sincerity between characters. Saxberger craves a genuine, lasting connection with other human beings. The Enthusiasm Society, meanwhile, is made up by people defined by simulacra (namely through being rich kids posing as struggling 60s/70s artists). Even Gloria must embrace facades as a survival mechanism. This disparity between Saxberger’s craving for tangible bonds and the facsimiles defining his new friend group proves a compelling source of drama. This element also ensures Late Fame is distinctive compared to other movies about older souls intertwining with communities of young people.

Unfortunately, Jones and Garfield don’t imbue quite as many idiosyncrasies into the third act visually. While Late Fame features a more standard, less dreamlike home stretch, its generally a solidly engaging enterprise getting immense mileage out of two strong lead performances and Samy Burch’s thoughtful writing. Who can argue with a movie where Greta Lee’s so achingly maximalist or Willem Dafoe waxes poetic about old New York buildings?