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Parting ways from the better-known colleague in a performance partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in height – but is also at times shot positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of something seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in Australia.