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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a showbiz partnership is a risky endeavor. Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this humorous and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. He is played with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally shrunk in size – but is also sometimes filmed placed in an unseen pit to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Motifs

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Hart is multifaceted: this film skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the non-queer character invented for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protege: college student at Yale and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with heedless girlishness by Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the legendary New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of unparalleled tunes 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 drinking problem, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He knows a hit when he views it – and senses himself falling into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the interval, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture takes place, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their following-event gathering. He realizes it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart’s humiliation; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the idea for his youth literature the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wishes Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her exploits with young men – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture tells us about a factor infrequently explored in films about the domain of theater music or the cinema: the dreadful intersection between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a live show – but who shall compose the numbers?

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