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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a entertainment duo is a hazardous endeavor. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at heightened personas, facing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his homosexuality with the heterosexual image created for him in the 1948 theater piece the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The picture conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Yet at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who would create the numbers?

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