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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance duo is a dangerous affair. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he watches it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is out on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.