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Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz duo is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also at times recorded positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie tells us about something rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.