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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a performance double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in size – but is also at times recorded placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, undependability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at Sardi’s where the rest of the film occurs, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the movie conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of a factor rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.