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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a performance partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also at times filmed positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at heightened personas, confronting Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their after-party. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film tells us about a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, 14 November in the Britain and on January 29 in Australia.