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Separating from the better-known colleague in a showbiz partnership is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also at times recorded standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie effectively triangulates his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his protégée: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was responsible for incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in standard fashion attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the picture conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the world couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the movie informs us of something infrequently explored in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is out on the 17th of October in the USA, November 14 in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.