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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in size – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the songs?

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