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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a entertainment double act is a dangerous affair. Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad small-scale drama from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in size – but is also at times shot standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the diminutive Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater composing duo with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Emotional Depth

The film imagines the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the form of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his youth literature Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke reveals that Hart to a degree enjoys observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in movies about the domain of theater music or the movies: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, November 14 in the Britain and on 29 January in the Australian continent.