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Separating from the better-known colleague in a showbiz duo is a risky affair. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and deeply sorrowful intimate film from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer previously portrayed the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this picture effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and would-be stage designer Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a multitude of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s premiere New York audience in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, detesting the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and makes his way to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the guise of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in standard fashion hears compassionately to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the film conceives Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can promote her occupation.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the movies: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at one stage, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who would create the numbers?

The film Blue Moon premiered at the London film festival; it is out on 17 October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.