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Breaking up from the better-known collaborator in a showbiz double act is a risky endeavor. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also occasionally shot placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered 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 profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a smash when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to feign all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.