GRETA LEE AND WILLEM DAFOE IN LATE FAME

KENT JONES: LATE FAME (2025) - SFIFF Opening Night

Past self revisited

Willem Dafoe goes back to his low-keyed indie roots to play the lead in Kent Jones' meditative, literate sophomore directorial effort, Late Fame , the story, loosely based on an 1890s satirical novella by Austrian writer Arthur Schnitzler, of how a group of well-heeled young poetasters in today's NYC pluck a forgotten working class poet who produced one admired slim volume in the 1970s out of the post office where he's been sorting mail for 37 years and give him a moment of, not fame, of course - they, who anachronistically call themselves The Enthusiasm Society, abhor social media platforms - but of affirmation, a wistful hint of what might have been if he had gone on writing poetry over the last many decades, and a realization that that cannot be.

The film was premiered at Venice and was included in numerous international film festivals, including Vienna, Stockholm, Thessaloniki , Geneva, Rotterdam, Glasgow, and US ones kicking off with New York Sept 28, the first after Venice. It opens in theaters tomorrow, April 24, 2026 but also is the opening night film at the historic Castro Theater for the San Francisco International Film Festival. Metacritic rating: 75%.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.