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Separating from the better-known partner in a showbiz double act is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally filmed positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned musical theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film tells us about a factor infrequently explored in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who would create the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the US, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.