Late Fame (Kent Jones, 2025) had its theatrical release on Friday, August 7, opening at Film Forum and Film at Lincoln Center.
Based on the Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler's novella by the same title—first appearing in 1895 and published in English by NYRB Classics in 2017—Late Fame stars Willem Defoe as Ed Saxberger, a once-upon-a-time New York poet who has worked at a post office for nearly four decades, his work now largely forgotten. After an eager and flattering young fan (Edmund Donovan) appears on his doorstep one night, Saxberger is welcomed into a new coterie of twentysomething admirers who hope to make him the central figure in an emerging literary salon.
Schnitzler's novella takes place in turn-of-the-century Vienna, while Jones's adaptation unfolds in 21st-century New York City where, writes Alissa Wilkinson in the New York Times, it "seems right at home... perhaps because the sort of young person who valorizes Ed, a relatively unknown poet, will always exist wherever there are eager youths." "A loving and lovely sensibility," Wilkinson goes on, "runs through Late Fame, a fond and wise understanding of why some people want to become artists without making much art and why other people quit making it altogether."
Late Fame shows in New York through August 13, then opens in Los Angeles on August 14, before a wider release throughout the fall.