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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a performance double act is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also sometimes shot standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Emotional Depth

The picture envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture imagines Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie informs us of an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.