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Separating from the more prominent partner in a performance duo is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David did it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in size – but is also sometimes filmed positioned in an hidden depression to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned Broadway composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their after-party. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the film envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the songs?

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