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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a showbiz partnership is a risky business. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart’s letters to his protege: young Yale student and aspiring set designer Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the famous musical theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He understands a smash when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to praise Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who desires Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in Australia.