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Separating from the more famous colleague in a showbiz double act is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with flamboyant genius, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally recorded positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous musical theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere NYC crowd in 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, detesting the exclamation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture informs us of a factor rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who shall compose the songs?

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