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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a performance double act is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in the year 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will survive. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who will write the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is out on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in the land down under.