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Separating from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous affair. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot positioned in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway songwriting team with composer 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 the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman 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 shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of something seldom addressed in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the tunes?

Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in the Australian continent.