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Separating from the better-known partner in a entertainment double act is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the break, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.