There are worse obssessions a film buff could indulge in than making a point of catching every film Willem Dafoe takes a role in. An Actor and Artist who merits a capital “A” when labeled such, he rarely disappoints, especially in star vehicles that tap into his soulful grasp of loneliness.

Think “Light Sleeper,” “At Eternity’s Gate,” The Lighthouse” or “The Florida Project.”

As a forgotten poet, more “never was” than “has been” famous in “Late Fame,” his perfect casting is summed up by a vamping actress (Greta Lee) who meets him and sizes him up in an instant.

“Of course, this is exactly how you would look.”

Based on a novella by early 20th century Viennese doctor and writer Arthur Schnitzler, casting director turned screenwriter Samy Burch and director Kent Jones (he made “Diane” and the doc “Hitchcock/Truffaut”) perfectly cast and reset the story in modern day New York.

A city of art and artists, publishing and legions of rich kids in and out of prestigious universities is the perfect place to park a decades dormant poet in the company of fawning poseurs.

Ed Saxberger came along too late for Kerouac and Ginsberg, a mournful, streetwise wordsmith who moved to the city and got published at the tail end of punk rock, an artist wholly out of his time when Reagan’s “Greed is Good” ’80s rolled around.

Ed stuck around by taking a job for life — “thirty seven years” with the U.S. Postal Service. He lives in a book (and poets on tape) stuffed apartment, a weathered, solitary man seemingly content to hang with work cronies at his favorite Greenwich Village bar, grill and poolhall.

But that overdressed young dandy (Edmund Donovan) who stares at his apartment building and hails him on the street knows who he is. Or was. Or almost was. He’s the guy who wrote “Way Past Go” in 1979.

Or course Ed works at the post office, “just like (poet/novelist Charles) Bukowski!”

Trust fund fanboy Meyers flatters, questions and implores Saxberger to drop in on Meyers’ “group.” “The Enthusiasm Society,” they call themselves — generally idle and notably entitled creative “types” who gather upstairs in the coffeehouse called “Any Old Place.” Flattered, Ed relents.

He is gushed-over by the eight or so members of this Moveable Feast, guys (Clay Singer, Luca Padovan, et al) who sneer at their fellow poseurs, the “sociopathic media” set — influencers wrapped up in the “monetizing of everything.” They make big plans for themselves and their new “re-discovery,” the lost genius Ed Saxberger, a writer they can hook up — via “family connections” — with an equally well-off trust fund baby agent (Jake Lacy).

Ed may say “I had my moment. It passed. It’s your turn, now.”

But Gloria (Lee), a swanning actress of the premature grande dame persuasion, is a bit older than the lads in their group. And the sexy singer/chancer with an eye towards self-promotion sizes Ed up to his face.

“There’s nothing more exciting than being a ‘re-discovered’ male genius.”

It isn’t long before Ed is shopping for “what the NYU kids” smoke at his local bodega, and not long after that the inevitable “You have no idea who you’re talking to” is trotted out for his “old” work friends (Clark Johnson, William Hill, et al).

We know where this is going, only we don’t.

Meeting that agent, responding to demands for “new work” and even a name-dropping “memoir,” Gloria’s desperate flirtations, put-up or shut-up time as The Enthusiam Society plans an “event” — the plot points may be anticipated, but how they play out isn’t.

Lee, of “Past Lives” and Netflix’s “The Last House,” takes her most extroverted role and acts and sings the hell out of it. We “know” Gloria, even if Ed needs to be warned about her.

But like him, we are dazzled by her Dietrich meets Liza by way of Piaf one-woman cabaret act. Ed may not notice that every man in the tiny club is just as aged, lusting and perhaps frustrated as him. We do.

Dafoe ably conveys a weary, myopic and ageing artist tempted out of his solitude by visions of what he once wanted to be.

Our filmmakers and players take Schnitzler’s cautionary tale of the empty allure of “Late Fame” and make us apply it to the present day. We’ve seen scores of Ed Saxbergers “re-discovered,” and every week has a new social media phenom that the culture must contend with, often someone who “re-discovers” this composer/singer/actor/painter/guitarist/writer/filmmaker.

Hell, director Jones made his bones as a documentarian remembering how French critic/filmmaker helped “re-discover” Alfred Hitchcock, for Pete’s sake.

No, there’s “nothing more exciting than re-discovering a male genius.”

But it’s worth remembering that sometimes they got lost for a reason, a hard truth even the “re-discovered” have to consider. Eventually.

Rating: unrated

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Greta Lee, Edmund Donovan, Clark Johnson, Graham Campbell, Clay Singer, Luca Padovan, Tony Torn and Jake Lacy

Credits: Directed by Kent Jones, scripted by Samy Burch, based on a novella by Arthur Schnitzler. A Magnolia release.

Running time: 1:36