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Breaking up from the more prominent partner in a showbiz partnership is a dangerous affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also at times shot standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in the year 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his pride in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film tells us about something seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the US, November 14 in the Britain and on the 29th of January in Australia.