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Separating from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz partnership is a risky affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also sometimes shot placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complex: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers 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, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the songs?

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