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Separating from the better-known partner in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Larry David did it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also at times recorded standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Prior to the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his pride in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.