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Parting ways from the more famous colleague in a showbiz partnership is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the film imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on 29 January in the Australian continent.