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Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a performance partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes shot standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film tells us about something rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the songs?

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