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Breaking up from the more prominent collaborator in a performance partnership is a risky endeavor. Larry David did it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic chamber piece from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and director Richard Linklater narrates the almost agonizing story of songwriter for Broadway the lyricist Lorenz Hart right after his separation from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and simulated diminutiveness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in size – but is also occasionally filmed standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at taller characters, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Multifaceted Role and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart's humorous takes on the hidden gayness of the classic Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he acidly calls it Okla-homo. The sexual identity of Lorenz Hart is complicated: this picture clearly contrasts his gayness with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney portraying Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of dual attraction from the lyricist's writings to his protege: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist the character Elizabeth Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater songwriting team with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was in charge of incomparable songs like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the beloved My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at the lyricist's addiction, inconsistency and gloomy fits, Rodgers broke with him and joined forces with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose Oklahoma! and then a multitude of stage and screen smashes.

Psychological Complexity

The film envisions the deeply depressed Hart in Oklahoma!’s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, gazing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, abhorring the punctuation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a success when he sees one – and perceives himself sinking into unsuccessfulness.

Before the interval, Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at Sardi’s where the balance of the picture occurs, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! troupe to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his showbiz duty to congratulate Rodgers, to act as if all is well. With suave restraint, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he offers a sop to his self-esteem in the form of a temporary job creating additional tunes for their existing show the show A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in standard fashion listens sympathetically to Hart's monologues of acerbic misery
• Actor Patrick Kennedy acts as writer EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley portrays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Richard Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley ruthlessly portrays a girl who wants Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can reveal her adventures with young men – as well of course the showbiz connection who can advance her profession.

Acting Excellence

Hawke reveals that Hart partly takes spectator's delight in listening to these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture reveals to us a factor rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the films: the awful convergence between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will survive. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the tunes?

Blue Moon premiered at the London cinema festival; it is available on 17 October in the USA, 14 November in the UK and on the 29th of January in the Australian continent.