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Separating from the more prominent partner in a performance duo is a dangerous affair. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times shot positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the appearance of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the USA, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in Australia.