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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a showbiz duo is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film clearly contrasts his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the movie envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who would create the tunes?

Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is released on October 17 in the USA, 14 November in the Britain and on January 29 in the Australian continent.