Late Fame finds that not-so-common sweet spot between caustic and elegiac, Willem Dafoe (a vision of resparked enthusiasm) and Greta Lee (a vision of too-sparked eagerness) making a meal from Samy Burch (May December) adapting Arthur Schnitzler’s novella, while Kent Jones parlays his deep knowledge of New York into the city’s most photogenic screen appearance in some years. It’s one the movies-for-adults crowd should be able to eat up with a spoon, and Magnolia Pictures will release it on August 7 at Film Forum. Ahead of this, a trailer (matching the movie’s old New York vibe with Lou Reed’s “Charley’s Girl”) has arrived.
As Leonardo Goi said in our Critic’s Pick review, “One need not be fluent in the ’70s New York poetry scene to appreciate such a piercing snapshot. Jones captures the boys’ milieu with near-ethnographic attention to its textures, patois, and etiquette; Late Fame is never funnier––or more consistently on-point––than when it turns to these pompous fresh graduates and their quirks. In adapting Arthur Schnitzler’s 1895 novella, Burch can posit Ed’s squad as analogue nostalgists in a digital world. But that, of course, is just one of their many poses.”
Here’s the official synopsis: “After an eager and flattering young admirer (Edmund Donovan) appears on his doorstep, Saxberger is beckoned into a coterie of twentysomething admirers who anoint him as a rediscovered genius. Intoxicated by the attention — and by the alluring presence of Gloria, the group’s ‘tragic heroine’ (a sinuous, Kurt Weill-crooning Greta Lee) — Saxberger gradually reckons with the authenticity of his newfound poetic circle.”
Watch the preview below:
