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Parting ways from the more famous collaborator in a showbiz duo is a dangerous affair. Larry David went through it. So did Andrew Ridgeley. Now, this witty and profoundly melancholic intimate film from screenwriter the writer Robert Kaplow and filmmaker the director Richard Linklater tells the all but unbearable story of musical theater lyricist Lorenz Hart shortly following his split from Richard Rodgers. The character is acted with campy brilliance, an dreadful hairpiece and fake smallness by Ethan Hawke, who is regularly technologically minimized in height – but is also sometimes filmed standing in an off-camera hole to gaze upward sadly at heightened personas, facing Hart's height issue as actor José Ferrer in the past acted the small-statured Toulouse-Lautrec.

Layered Persona and Elements

Hawke achieves big, world-weary laughs with Hart’s riffs on the hidden gayness of the film Casablanca and the overly optimistic theater production he recently attended, with all the lariat-wielding cowhands; he acidly calls it Okla-queer. The sexuality of Lorenz Hart is multifaceted: this film effectively triangulates his queer identity with the non-queer character created for him in the 1948 stage show the musical Words and Music (with actor Mickey Rooney acting as Lorenz Hart); it intelligently infers a kind of bisexual tendency from the lyricist's writings to his young apprentice: college student at Yale and budding theater artist Weiland, acted in this movie with carefree youthful femininity by the performer Margaret Qualley.

Being a member of the famous New York theater songwriting team with the composer Rodgers, Hart was in charge of matchless numbers like The Lady Is a Tramp, Manhattan, My Funny Valentine and of course the song Blue Moon. But frustrated by Hart's drinking problem, unreliability and melancholic episodes, Rodgers severed ties with him and partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II to create the musical Oklahoma! and then a raft of stage and screen smashes.

Sentimental Layers

The picture conceives the severely despondent Hart in the show Oklahoma!'s premiere New York audience in 1943, looking on with jealous anguish as the performance continues, loathing its mild sappiness, detesting the punctuation mark at the finish of the heading, but soul-crushingly cognizant of how devastatingly successful it is. He realizes a success when he views it – and perceives himself sinking into defeat.

Even before the intermission, Lorenz Hart sadly slips away and goes to the pub at the venue Sardi's where the rest of the film unfolds, and anticipates the (certainly) victorious Oklahoma! cast to show up for their after-party. He knows it is his performance responsibility to compliment Richard Rodgers, to feign everything is all right. With polished control, actor Andrew Scott plays Richard Rodgers, clearly embarrassed at what both are aware is Hart’s humiliation; he provides a consolation to his pride in the appearance of a short-term gig writing new numbers for their current production the musical A Connecticut Yankee, which only makes it worse.

• Actor Bobby Cannavale acts as the barkeeper who in traditional style listens sympathetically to the character's soliloquies of bitter despondency
• Actor Patrick Kennedy portrays author EB White, to whom Hart accidentally gives the notion for his kids' story the novel Stuart Little
• The actress Qualley plays Weiland, the inaccessibly lovely Ivy League pupil with whom the picture imagines Lorenz Hart to be intricately and masochistically in love

Hart has earlier been rejected by Rodgers. Undoubtedly the universe can’t be so cruel as to get him jilted by Weiland as well? But Margaret Qualley pitilessly acts a young woman who desires Hart to be the laughing, platonic friend to whom she can disclose her experiences with young men – as well of course the Broadway power broker who can further her career.

Acting Excellence

Hawke shows that Lorenz Hart somewhat derives voyeuristic pleasure in learning of these guys but he is also genuinely, tragically besotted with Elizabeth Weiland and the film reveals to us a factor infrequently explored in films about the world of musical theatre or the movies: the terrible overlap between occupational and affectionate loss. However at some level, Lorenz Hart is boldly cognizant that what he has attained will endure. It's a magnificent acting job from Hawke. This could be a stage musical – but who would create the numbers?

Blue Moon was shown at the London film festival; it is available on 17 October in the US, November 14 in the United Kingdom and on 29 January in Australia.