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Parting ways from the more famous partner in a entertainment duo is a hazardous affair. Larry David went through it. The same for Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater recounts the almost agonizing tale of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his separation from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by Ethan Hawke, who is frequently digitally reduced in height – but is also occasionally recorded placed in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer once played the small-statured artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Motifs

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with Hart's humorous takes on the concealed homosexuality of the classic Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he recently attended, with all the lasso-twirling cowboys; he sarcastically dubs it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is complex: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona created for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his young apprentice: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the famous New York theater lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, the number Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But frustrated by the lyricist's addiction, undependability and depressive outbursts, Rodgers broke with him and partnered with lyricist Oscar Hammerstein II to create Oklahoma! and then a series of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie envisions the severely despondent Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s premiere Manhattan spectators in the year 1943, looking on with envious despair as the production unfolds, despising its bland sentimentality, hating the exclamation mark at the conclusion of the name, but dishearteningly conscious of how lethally effective it is. He realizes a hit when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Even before the interval, Hart unhappily departs and heads to the tavern at Sardi’s where the remainder of the movie unfolds, and waits for the (unavoidably) successful Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their after-party. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to act as if things are fine. With suave restraint, the performer Andrew Scott portrays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is the lyricist's shame; he gives a pacifier to his pride in the form of a temporary job composing fresh songs for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in conventional manner listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of bitter despondency
• Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart inadvertently provides the notion for his youth literature the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley acts as the character Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Hart to be complicatedly and self-harmingly in love

Hart has previously been abandoned by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a young woman who wants Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can reveal her exploits with guys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can further her career.

Standout Roles

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in listening to these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the picture reveals to us an aspect seldom addressed in pictures about the domain of theater music or the movies: the terrible overlap between professional and romantic failure. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This could be a live show – but who shall compose the tunes?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is released on 17 October in the US, 14 November in the UK and on 29 January in the land down under.