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Separating from the more famous partner in a showbiz duo is a hazardous affair. Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz 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 shall compose the numbers?

Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is released on October 17 in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.