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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a performance duo is a dangerous business. Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from writer the writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater recounts the nearly intolerable tale of Broadway lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in height – but is also occasionally shot placed in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he just watched, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The sexuality of Hart is multifaceted: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: college student at Yale and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to write the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The movie conceives the deeply depressed Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the production unfolds, loathing its mild sappiness, abhorring the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He knows a success when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie occurs, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! troupe to show up for their post-show celebration. He knows it is his showbiz duty to praise Rodgers, to pretend all is well. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale acts as the bartender who in conventional manner attends empathetically to the character's soliloquies of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy acts as EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the movie imagines Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the world can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Lorenz 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 promote her occupation.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in movies about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will persist. It’s a terrific performance from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who would create the songs?

The movie Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is out on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on January 29 in Australia.