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Breaking up from the better-known partner in a entertainment double act is a risky affair. Larry David did it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater narrates the nearly intolerable story of Broadway lyricist Lorenz Hart just after his split from composer Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with theatrical excellence, an dreadful hairpiece and simulated diminutiveness by actor Ethan Hawke, who is frequently technologically minimized in size – but is also sometimes recorded standing in an unseen pit to stare up wistfully at more statuesque figures, facing Hart's height issue as José Ferrer once played the diminutive artist Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke earns large, cynical chuckles with the character's witty comments on the concealed homosexuality of the movie Casablanca and the excessively cheerful stage show he just watched, with all the rope-spinning ranch hands; he bitingly labels it Okla-queer. The sexual identity 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 playing Hart); it cleverly extrapolates a kind of bisexuality from Hart's correspondence to his protégée: youthful Yale attendee and aspiring set designer Elizabeth Weiland, portrayed in this film with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous Broadway composing duo with the composer Rodgers, Lorenz Hart was accountable for matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, the tune Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the titular Blue Moon. But annoyed at Hart’s alcoholism, unreliability and depressive outbursts, Richard Rodgers broke with him and teamed up with the writer Oscar Hammerstein II to compose the show Oklahoma! and then a raft of theater and film hits.

Sentimental Layers

The movie imagines the deeply depressed Hart in the musical Oklahoma!'s first-night NYC crowd in 1943, observing with envious despair as the production unfolds, hating its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the conclusion of the name, but heartsinkingly aware of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a smash when he watches it – and feels himself descending into unsuccessfulness.

Even before the break, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and heads to the bar at the venue Sardi's where the balance of the picture unfolds, and anticipates the (inevitably) triumphant Oklahoma! company to arrive for their following-event gathering. He is aware it is his entertainment obligation to congratulate Rodgers, to pretend things are fine. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott portrays Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is the lyricist's shame; he provides a consolation to his ego in the form of a brief assignment creating additional tunes for their ongoing performance the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which just exacerbates the situation.

• The performer Bobby Cannavale plays the bartender who in traditional style listens sympathetically to Hart’s arias of vinegary despair
• Patrick Kennedy plays writer EB White, to whom Lorenz Hart inadvertently provides the concept for his youth literature Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Elizabeth Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the movie envisions Lorenz Hart to be complexly and self-destructively in love

Lorenz Hart has already been jilted by Richard Rodgers. Undoubtedly the cosmos can’t be so cruel as to cause him to be spurned by Elizabeth Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley mercilessly depicts a youthful female who wishes Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can reveal her adventures with boys – as well of course the theater industry influencer who can advance her profession.

Performance Highlights

Hawke demonstrates that Lorenz Hart partly takes observational satisfaction in listening to these boys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Weiland and the film reveals to us something rarely touched on in pictures about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the dreadful intersection between career and love defeat. Nevertheless at one stage, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has achieved will endure. It's an outstanding portrayal from Hawke. This might become a theater production – but who will write the numbers?

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