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Separating from the better-known partner in a performance partnership is a hazardous business. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in size – but is also sometimes shot placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a success when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Even before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in Australia.