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![](\"https:\/\/cdn.craft.cloud\/26ed9c78-feb7-4ee6-8ddf-262fd7bafb2d\/assets\/tco\/images\/Late-Fame.jpg\")
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After decades spent working for the United States Postal Service in New York City, Ed Saxberger (Willem Dafoe) returns home one day to his Soho apartment to discover a\u00a0visitor waiting for him. Meyers (Edmund Donovan) is an eager young writer who has tracked Saxberger down after discovering a\u00a0copy of his only published poetry collection, which he devoured in one afternoon sitting in \u200b\u201c<\/span>Foyles on Charing Cross Road\u201d (IYKYK<\/span>). Saxberger is surprised, but initially touched, though declines the enthusiastic invitation to join Meyers\u2019 literary group. The dogged Meyers is not dissuaded, and after some gentle persuasion, Saxberger\u2019s long-forgotten vanity gets the better of him and he decides to grace the group with his presence.<\/p>\n The jumble of rich boys living on mommy and daddy\u2019s dime fancy themselves the next Beat generation, spending their afternoons and evenings lounging around in coffee shops and bars trying to say something interesting about their hyper privileged lives. Their number permit only one female member, the eccentric actress Gloria (Greta Lee) who most of the group have either an active or past infatuation with. Saxberger is not immune to her charms, taken in by her free spirit and spontaneity. She represents the life that Saxberger thought he would lead when he was a\u00a0working class boy who moved to New York City in search of an artistic life.<\/p>\n As the group work towards putting on a\u00a0literary showcase (which they treat as if it\u2019s an entirely novel concept rather than something that occurs every night in New York City) Saxberger reckons with the years that have slipped by and the diverging path his life took from the one he thought he\u2019d have as a\u00a0poet. It\u2019s a\u00a0film in love with the downtown New York of yesteryear \u2013 that which Cookie Mueller and William Burroughs haunted and Saxberger has all but forgotten until Meyers careens into his\u00a0life.<\/p>\n While Samy Burch\u2019s script makes some amusing observations about the fact that the only people who can afford to be artists anymore are rich kids, it\u2019s a\u00a0far cry from the biting knock-off that was her May December screenplay, and the wistful gazing towards a\u00a0New York that doesn\u2019t exist any more seems to ignore the many flaws that existed during that period. (It seems unlikely Gloria, an Asian-American woman, would have been readily invited into an all-white-male group and treated as a\u00a0peer.) Dafoe is serviceable, but poor Greta Lee gets the worse of it, her character a\u00a0Manic Pixie Litgirl only afforded interiority right at the end of the story. She does what she can, but the Theatre Kid energy makes Gloria a\u00a0grating presence every time she steps into\u00a0frame.<\/p>\n Then Late Fame ends, not with a\u00a0bang but a\u00a0whimper, never quite finding the heart of its narrative. It\u2019s reminiscent of Owen Kline\u2019s 2021<\/span> comedy Funny Pages <\/i>in its portrayal of an unappreciated genius being discovered by a\u00a0bright-eyed youth, but Kline\u2019s instincts were sharper and stronger; that film felt like it had a\u00a0perspective.\u00a0Kent Jones doesn\u2019t even delivery a\u00a0compelling eulogy for the lost creative hub of the Big Apple; Late Fame<\/i> is nostalgic but always gestures at more interesting artists than presenting one of its\u00a0own.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n