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Separating from the better-known partner in a showbiz duo is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally filmed positioned in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor seldom addressed in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

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