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Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a entertainment duo is a risky affair. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in stature – but is also at times recorded standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a success when he views it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to appear for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With polished control, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Qualley plays the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the movie envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the cosmos couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who desires Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, the 14th of November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.