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Breaking up from the more famous partner in a entertainment partnership is a dangerous business. Comedian Larry David experienced it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with flamboyant genius, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at taller characters, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the heterosexual image invented for him in the 1948 stage show Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in Oklahoma!’s opening night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the performance continues, loathing its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and goes to the pub at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the appearance of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the barman who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale attendee with whom the movie imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has already been jilted by Rodgers. Surely the world couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in hearing about these young men but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in films about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in the land down under.