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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a entertainment duo is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Currently, this witty and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable tale of musical theater lyricist the lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his breakup from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally shrunk in height – but is also sometimes recorded placed in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity of Hart is complicated: this movie effectively triangulates his queer identity with the heterosexual image fabricated for him in the 1948 theater piece Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with uninhibited maidenly charm by actress Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the renowned musical theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for unparalleled tunes like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But exasperated with the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers ended their partnership and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The picture imagines the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s first-night New York audience in the year 1943, observing with jealous anguish as the show proceeds, despising its bland sentimentality, abhorring the exclamation point at the end of the title, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He understands a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the break, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film occurs, and expects the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! company to show up for their post-show celebration. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what each understands is Hart's embarrassment; he gives a pacifier to his self-esteem in the appearance of a short-term gig creating additional tunes for their existing show the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy plays EB White, to whom Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Hart to be intricately and masochistically in adoration

Hart has previously been abandoned by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can confide her experiences with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in learning of these guys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Weiland and the movie tells us about a factor seldom addressed in films about the domain of theater music or the films: the dreadful intersection between professional and romantic failure. Yet at some level, Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This could be a theater production – but who will write the songs?

Blue Moon was shown at the London movie festival; it is released on the 17th of October in the United States, 14 November in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.