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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a showbiz partnership is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also occasionally shot standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous New York theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Prior to the interval, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in listening to these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.