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Parting ways from the better-known colleague in a entertainment double act is a hazardous affair. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with flamboyant genius, an notable toupee and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in stature – but is also at times filmed placed in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Motifs

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the excessively cheerful musical he recently attended, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this film effectively triangulates his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The movie imagines the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, despising its insipid emotionality, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the pub at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture takes place, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to feign all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the barkeeper who in traditional style attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale attendee with whom the film envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her exploits with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart to a degree enjoys spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. However at one stage, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who will write the songs?

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