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Separating from the more prominent partner in a performance double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her exploits with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

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