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Parting ways from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in height – but is also occasionally recorded positioned in an off-camera hole to look up poignantly at taller characters, addressing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the petite Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke gets substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this film clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from the lyricist's writings to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, loathing its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He knows a hit when he watches it – and feels himself descending into defeat.

Even before the break, Hart unhappily departs and goes to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With smooth moderation, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his ego in the appearance of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the picture envisions Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in affection

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the world can’t be so cruel as to have him dumped by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us something rarely touched on in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Yet at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.