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Parting ways from the better-known partner in a entertainment double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in stature – but is also at times recorded standing in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Elements

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his gayness with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned Broadway songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The picture envisions the severely despondent Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the interval, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and expects the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to show up for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her exploits with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the United States, November 14 in the UK and on 29 January in the Australian continent.