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Breaking up from the more famous colleague in a performance double act is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable account of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally shrunk in height – but is also at times filmed positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it shrewdly deduces a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: young Yale student and would-be stage designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary musical theater lyricist-composer pair with the composer Rodgers, Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in the year 1943, gazing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a temporary job writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story Stuart Little
• Qualley portrays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her exploits with guys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in listening to these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture informs us of an aspect infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the films: the terrible overlap between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a live show – but who will write the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on the 17th of October in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in the Australian continent.