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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a entertainment double act is a dangerous endeavor. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The picture envisions the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in standard fashion attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

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