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Separating from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment double act is a dangerous business. Larry David went through it. Likewise Andrew Ridgeley. Presently, this witty and deeply sorrowful small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable account of songwriter for Broadway Lorenz Hart just after his separation from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often technologically minimized in stature – but is also at times recorded standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at more statuesque figures, confronting Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke gets large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat musical he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The orientation of Lorenz Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: young Yale student and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with heedless girlishness by the performer Margaret Qualley.

As a component of the renowned musical theater composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The movie conceives the profoundly saddened Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, gazing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its mild sappiness, hating the exclamation point at the end of the title, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a smash when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Prior to the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the bar at the establishment Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their following-event gathering. He knows it is his performance responsibility to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, the performer Andrew Scott acts as Rodgers, evidently ashamed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the appearance of a temporary job writing new numbers for their ongoing performance the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in conventional manner attends empathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the idea for his children’s book the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture envisions Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in adoration

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a young woman who wants Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with guys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Weiland and the film tells us about a factor rarely touched on in movies about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between occupational and affectionate loss. However at one stage, Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who would create the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is out on October 17 in the USA, 14 November in the Britain and on 29 January in Australia.