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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance double act is a risky business. Larry David experienced it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film informs us of a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. However at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the UK and on January 29 in the Australian continent.