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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a performance duo is a risky business. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable tale of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally shot placed in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film imagines the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, detesting 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 perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the songs?

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