Film Review: LATE FAME: A New York Story Featuring A Career-Crowning Performance from Willem Dafoe [NYFF 2025]
Late Fame Review
Late Fame (2025) Film Review from the 63rd Annual New York Film Festival, a movie directed by Kent Jones, written by Samy Burch and Arthur Schnitzler and starring Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Jake Lacy, Clark Johnson, Luca Padovan, Edmund Donovan, Michael Everett Johnson, William Hill, Graham Campbell, Clay Singer, Stephen Badalamenti, Arthur Langlie, Dan Jablons, Vince Edgehill, Bob Leszczak and Michael Lowery.
For almost 40 years, Willem Dafoe has been one of our most charismatic and enigmatic character actors. In Kent Jones’s tremendously entertaining New York story, Late Fame, Dafoe gets to carry the entire film on his shoulders with the kind of ease that makes it a career-topping performance for a man who has tried his hand at just about every type of role you could imagine. Jones gets the New York City experience the film captures down to a science, but the movie would be much less without the brilliant Dafoe’s tremendously enjoyable style and charisma.
As the film opens, we learn Dafoe’s character in the film, Ed Saxberger, has a close relative who has fallen ill. Ed gets by working at the post office despite his one-time 15-minutes of fleeting fame as a published poet. He is approached one day by a young man who seems to know his work well and Ed is asked to share his wisdom with a group of young men who hang out locally in the city. Our two most memorable characters from this group are Luca Padovan’s Winn and, arguably, the leader of the pack, Meyers (the terrific Edmund Donovan). Ed is taken into a whole new world. It is one where he finds acceptance that seems to have eluded him most of his life.
Greta Lee portrays an older woman, Gloria, who sports a wig and fancy clothes straight out of the world of The Great Gatsby and hangs out with the mostly male gang on a regular basis. Gloria and Ed form a bond as the movie progresses. Things get complicated as she can show up to his place unexpectedly at any given time, but when Ed goes to see her, it appears she’s living a completely different lifestyle than the one she’s been displaying in the group.
This film revolves around a poetry reading that Ed is asked to do at a hot spot in the city. Well, it becomes a poetry reading after a hold-up in the creative process. At first, Ed is supposed to be creating new work for a presentation, but there is some unwillingness from Ed to retreat back to his past and become the man he once was and hasn’t been for a long time.
Many scenes featuring the group of mostly 20-somethings hanging out with the older Ed are crowd-pleasers, to be certain. They contain witty dialogue with punchlines that are spun off faster than a speeding bullet. Greta Lee’s Gloria gets to revel in some of these scenes as well with her tremendous personality and impeccable style. Without giving too much away, the film focuses in on the fact that Ed is sort of hoodwinked by the group because he is given a sense of belonging which is almost enough to make him stray from the little real family he has left.
Late Fame keeps the viewer riveted from beginning to end with its tremendous authenticity. Kent Jones drops us in the Big Apple and we see the artsy side of New York living where, unfortunately, some shallow people hide. A fake review is written by one of the young group members while whether or not the members have actually read Ed’s poetry becomes debatable. It’s cooler to say you’ve read something than to actually read it in these offbeat times and the movie is kept relatable by the outside presence Ed brings to the group.
Dafoe is nothing short of spectacular. He makes this role his own and keeps the movie’s pacing consistent thanks to a performance that knows the ins and outs of the sharp script that Dafoe has been presented with. Dafoe’s character interacts with the young male group that floats through existence while he goes to work every day to pay the bills. We want Dafoe to find happiness, perhaps with Greta Lee’s character, but the New York beat moves quicker than Ed may want to keep up with.
Lee, herself, is something else here. She’s a ball of energy that catapults through the movie in such a way that it’s impossible to take your eyes off the screen whenever she appears. Watch when she has to perform while looking wasted and then comes to life magnetically for the crowd in front of her. Lee is a talented performer and more than shines besides the always formidable Dafoe.
Late Fame doesn’t sugarcoat things and make things become too overly sentimental. On the contrary. Ed gets to experience a life that he may have been able to pass on had he not thought his past work was something that was deserving of more praise than it actually received. Ed meets a key literary presence to discuss writing a memoir, but Ed may ultimately have writer’s block or may just feel that there’s not enough reality in his re-emergence into fame. Certainly not the amount that he needs to try to rejuvenate his former career.
Dafoe can do no wrong, but this performance is the highlight of his distinguished career. As a man who could seem like a has-been, Dafoe presents Ed as a likable guy who is genuinely real and would need others to keep it real as well in order for him to continue down the path that was once presented to him and taken away from him. This film is more enjoyable than you will expect it to be and if you’re a die-hard New Yorker, you’ll love the attention to detail that Late Fame brings to the table. It’s a pretty remarkable film and Dafoe is a screen legend who finally has found a juicy, successful leading role to call his own.
Rating: 8/10
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