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Separating from the better-known partner in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in height – but is also occasionally filmed placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He knows a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the appearance of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the world couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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