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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a entertainment duo is a hazardous affair. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes shot placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in the Australian continent.