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Separating from the more prominent partner in a performance partnership is a hazardous endeavor. Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture conceives the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Prior to the break, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in Australia.