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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance double act is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in size – but is also occasionally recorded standing in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture occurs, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about something rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.