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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance partnership is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful 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 effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, abhorring the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of something seldom addressed in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is out on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.