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Separating from the better-known partner in a performance double act is a risky business. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable tale of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes shot placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complex: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: young Yale student and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a smash when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the tavern at Sardi’s where the rest of the film takes place, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her experiences with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film informs us of a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the United States, 14 November in the Britain and on 29 January in Australia.