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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a showbiz duo is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also at times recorded placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at taller characters, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like 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 drinking problem, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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