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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in size – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous musical theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the interval, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the film conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wants 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 promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke demonstrates that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the tunes?

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