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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a performance partnership is a hazardous affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes shot standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her exploits with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about a factor rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who would create the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the USA, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.