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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater narrates the all but unbearable account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in height – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is complicated: this picture clearly contrasts his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by actress Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, hating its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart miserably ducks out and heads to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the movie conceives Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. Yet at a certain point, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who shall compose the tunes?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the Australian continent.