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Parting ways from the more prominent collaborator in a performance double act is a dangerous endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and deeply sorrowful chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart right after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in stature – but is also occasionally shot positioned in an hidden depression to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke gets big, world-weary laughs with Hart's humorous takes on the subtle queer themes of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this movie clearly contrasts his gayness with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a raft of live and cinematic successes.

Sentimental Layers

The film conceives the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in 1943, gazing with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He realizes a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into failure.

Before the intermission, Lorenz Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and waits for the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the guise of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their current production A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the barkeeper who in conventional manner hears compassionately to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale student with whom the film conceives Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Certainly the world 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 chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her experiences with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Hart to a degree enjoys voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor seldom addressed in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the films: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at a certain point, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has accomplished will survive. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is released on October 17 in the USA, 14 November in the Britain and on 29 January in the Australian continent.