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Parting ways from the better-known colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times recorded standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film effectively triangulates his homosexuality with the non-queer character fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a success when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the break, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barman who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is available on October 17 in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on January 29 in the Australian continent.