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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a performance duo is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable tale of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in stature – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protege: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The picture imagines the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the movie informs us of a factor rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will endure. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the United States, the 14th of November in the Britain and on 29 January in Australia.