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Separating from the more prominent colleague in a performance duo is a risky business. Larry David experienced it. Likewise Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this clever and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and director the director Richard Linklater tells the nearly intolerable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is regularly digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes shot positioned in an unseen pit to look up poignantly at heightened personas, addressing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with the character's witty comments on the hidden gayness of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complicated: this picture effectively triangulates his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 musical the production Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned Broadway songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for unparalleled tunes like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, undependability and gloomy fits, Richard Rodgers severed ties with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Emotional Depth

The film envisions the profoundly saddened Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, observing with covetous misery as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, detesting the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but dishearteningly conscious of how extremely potent it is. He understands a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Prior to the break, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to appear for their post-show celebration. He realizes it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With polished control, Andrew Scott acts as Richard Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he offers a sop to his ego in the guise of a short-term gig composing fresh songs for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale portrays the bartender who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of acerbic misery
• Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture conceives Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Lorenz Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Surely the universe couldn't be that harsh as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart partly takes spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also truly, sadly infatuated with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is defiantly aware that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London film festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in Australia.