LATE FAME has great performances from Wilem Dafoe and Greta Lee but is otherwise a film of half realized ideas.
The plot has a bunch of 20 somethings hooking up with a once briefly famous poet (Dafoe) who works in the Post Office. They have read his book of poetry and and want him to be part of their clique. He joins and tries to write some new material for their upcoming salon.
The gem of an idea gets lost about a third of the way in as the film flounders and goes from pillar to post. Great ideas about getting older are lost next to badly written and badly acted scenes involing the young turks. The film sputters to life infrequently but it never maintains its footing.
It doesn't help that Kent Jones, for all his year promoting and writing on film is an unimaginative director. Yes he is technically proficent but he has no style of his own. Much of the film feels like it was cribbed from other, better, inde films. That may play okay with the art house crowd who don't watch many small inde films, but as someone who tends to focus on these small films, I didn't see anything new.
The worst part is the script itself. The first third of the film is solid and focused as it nicely sets things up, but then the film stops having a real narrative thrust and we are left with random scenes that don't connect. Threads are brought up that get abandoned and it all ends in a moment that they must have had when they wrote the first third but didn't know how to get it. The result is series of failed dramatic scenes that break everything part just so the film ends well.
Its a mess.
On the other hand both Dafoe and Lee are awards worthy and deserving of a better film together with a real script and an experienced director.
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