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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance duo is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The picture envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film informs us of something rarely touched on in films about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

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