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Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a performance double act is a hazardous business. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in height – but is also occasionally filmed placed in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this picture effectively triangulates his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous New York theater songwriting team with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The picture imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Prior to the interval, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the appearance of a brief assignment composing fresh songs for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who desires Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan 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 released on 17 October in the US, the 14th of November in the Britain and on January 29 in Australia.