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Parting ways from the more prominent partner in a showbiz double act is a risky endeavor. Comedian Larry David went through it. So did Musician Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this humorous and heartbreakingly sad intimate film from screenwriter Robert Kaplow and helmer Richard Linklater recounts the all but unbearable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his breakup from Richard Rodgers. His role is portrayed with theatrical excellence, an unspeakable combover and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is often digitally reduced in stature – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an hidden depression to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing Hart’s vertical challenge as José Ferrer previously portrayed the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Themes

Hawke achieves substantial, jaded humor with Hart’s riffs on the subtle queer themes of the film Casablanca and the cheesily upbeat theater production he’s just been to see, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-gay. The sexual identity of Hart is complex: this movie skillfully juxtaposes his gayness with the straight persona invented for him in the 1948 musical the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of dual attraction from Hart’s letters to his young apprentice: young Yale student and aspiring set designer the character Elizabeth Weiland, played here with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the legendary Broadway lyricist-composer pair with composer Rodgers, Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like 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, inconsistency and melancholic episodes, Rodgers ended their partnership and partnered with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to write Oklahoma! and then a series of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the deeply depressed Lorenz Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s opening night New York audience in 1943, observing with envious despair as the show proceeds, despising its insipid emotionality, abhorring the exclamation mark at the end of the title, but heartsinkingly aware of how extremely potent it is. He understands a success when he watches it – and perceives himself sinking into failure.

Before the intermission, Hart sadly slips away and goes to the tavern at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film takes place, and waits for the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! cast to appear for their after-party. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Richard Rodgers, to feign things are fine. With suave restraint, Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what they both know is Hart's embarrassment; he provides a consolation to his self-esteem in the form of a brief assignment writing new numbers for their existing show A Connecticut Yankee, which simply intensifies the pain.

• Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in standard fashion hears compassionately to Hart's monologues of vinegary despair
• The thespian Patrick Kennedy portrays EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart unintentionally offers the notion for his children’s book Stuart Little
• Margaret Qualley plays the character Weiland, the impossibly gorgeous Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Surely the cosmos wouldn't be that brutal as to cause him to be spurned by Weiland as well? But Qualley mercilessly depicts a girl who desires Lorenz Hart to be the giggly, sexually unthreatening intimate to whom she can confide her adventures with boys – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes voyeuristic pleasure in hearing about these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film informs us of an aspect infrequently explored in pictures about the realm of stage musicals or the cinema: the awful convergence between professional and romantic failure. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is rebelliously conscious that what he has accomplished will persist. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This may turn into a stage musical – but who shall compose the songs?

The film Blue Moon was shown at the London cinema festival; it is out on 17 October in the USA, November 14 in the Britain and on January 29 in the land down under.