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Separating from the better-known partner in a performance partnership is a hazardous business. Larry David experienced it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in height – but is also at times shot standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is multifaceted: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his homosexuality with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart’s letters to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The movie envisions the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, despising its mild sappiness, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture conceives Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the universe wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley pitilessly acts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her exploits with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about something infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a stage musical – but who will write the numbers?

Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is released on October 17 in the US, 14 November in the Britain and on January 29 in Australia.