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Separating from the more famous colleague in a entertainment double act is a hazardous business. Comedian Larry David did it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times filmed standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-gay. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, hating its insipid emotionality, hating the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the interval, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the remainder of the movie takes place, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the world wouldn't be that brutal as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wishes Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can disclose her experiences with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in learning of these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us something seldom addressed in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the tunes?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in Australia.