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Parting ways from the better-known collaborator in a entertainment partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed standing in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of a factor infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the United States, the 14th of November in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.