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Breaking up from the more famous collaborator in a performance double act is a risky endeavor. Larry David went through it. The same for Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this clever and profoundly melancholic small-scale drama from scriptwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable account of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and artificial shortness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also at times filmed placed in an off-camera hole to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, addressing Hart’s vertical challenge as actor José Ferrer previously portrayed the petite artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Complex Character and Elements

Hawke earns substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic stage show he just watched, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexuality of Hart is complex: this film skillfully juxtaposes his queer identity with the straight persona fabricated for him in the 1948 musical Words and Music (with Mickey Rooney playing Lorenz Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and budding theater artist Elizabeth Weiland, played here with uninhibited maidenly charm by Margaret Qualley.

As part of the renowned New York theater composing duo with musician Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was responsible for matchless numbers like the classic The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, the standard My Funny Valentine and of course Blue Moon. But exasperated with Hart’s alcoholism, undependability and melancholic episodes, Richard Rodgers ended their partnership and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write the musical Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The film imagines the deeply depressed 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 punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how lethally effective it is. He knows a success when he views it – and feels himself descending into failure.

Even before the interval, Hart miserably ducks out and makes his way to the tavern at the establishment Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and expects the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to appear for their after-party. He knows it is his showbiz duty to compliment Rodgers, to pretend everything is all right. With smooth moderation, the performer Andrew Scott plays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his pride in the guise 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 barman who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart accidentally gives the concept for his kids' story the book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley acts as Weiland, the unattainably beautiful Yale attendee with whom the film imagines Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Certainly the world 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 Lorenz Hart to be the chuckling, non-sexual confidant to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives observational satisfaction in hearing about these boys but he is also authentically, mournfully enamored with Elizabeth Weiland and the picture tells us about something rarely touched on in movies about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Yet at a certain point, Lorenz Hart is defiantly aware that what he has attained will persist. It's an outstanding portrayal from Ethan Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the numbers?

The movie Blue Moon screened at the London movie festival; it is available on October 17 in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on the 29th of January in the land down under.