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Breaking up from the better-known colleague in a showbiz duo is a dangerous business. Larry David experienced it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad chamber piece from writer Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the almost agonizing tale of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. He is played with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in height – but is also sometimes shot standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, confronting the lyricist's stature problem as José Ferrer in the past acted the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Themes

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat stage show he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The orientation of Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the song The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a series of live and cinematic successes.

Psychological Complexity

The film conceives the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with covetous misery as the production unfolds, hating its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation point at the conclusion of the name, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how lethally effective it is. He knows a hit when he sees one – and senses himself falling into defeat.

Before the break, Lorenz Hart unhappily departs and goes to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their after-party. He is aware it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to act as if everything is all right. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, obviously uncomfortable at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his ego in the guise of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their current production the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale plays the barman who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Actor Patrick Kennedy plays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Yale student with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in affection

Lorenz Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Certainly the universe couldn't be that harsh as to have him dumped by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Qualley ruthlessly portrays a youthful female who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can disclose her experiences with boys – as well of course the showbiz connection who can promote her occupation.

Performance Highlights

Hawke shows that Hart somewhat derives spectator's delight in listening to these young men but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the movie reveals to us an aspect rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at one stage, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has accomplished will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a live show – but who will write the numbers?

The film Blue Moon screened at the London cinema festival; it is out on October 17 in the United States, 14 November in the UK and on January 29 in the land down under.