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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a performance partnership is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in size – but is also at times shot placed in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who shall compose the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.