Ethan Hawke invites us to drown our sorrows

I don't know if Blue moon It's the best film of the year, but I would venture to say it's the most heartwarming. This is no small feat, given that it begins by announcing the death of its protagonist, Lorenz Hart, the lyricist who forged a memorable collaboration with composer Richard Rodgers, to whom we owe milestones of musical theater such as My funny Valentine or the song that gives the film its title. But Hart, who in the film has the features of a shrunken Ethan Hawke with a prosthetic bald head, possesses enough charisma to make us forget the mournful anticipation and gladly accompany him to the bar where he takes refuge from the premiere ofOklahoma!, a show that his colleague Rodgers performed with Oscar Hammerstein. To the spite of that infidelity is added the nervousness of the imminent encounter with the young woman who has fascinated the homosexual Hart, who projects onto her a naive romantic ideal.

Haunted by disillusionment and notorious alcoholism, and ignorant of his impending end, the central character entrenches himself in his gift for irony to deny the critical point he finds himself at. And he almost convinces us, since the dialogues that screenwriter Robert Kaplow puts in his mouth rhyme with the effervescent meter of Hollywood classicism. But Richard LinklaterThe expert filmmaker of the word knows that it is not advisable to treat the text from a nostalgic idealization, and he proposes the staging as an attentive, understanding and discreet listening to Hart-Hawke's almost monologue; the same as his own. partnersMargaret Qualley, Andrew Scott, and Bobby Cannavale, who silently accompany a friend nearing the end of his life, are no coincidence. It's no accident that the characters quote the best (and worst) lines from Casablanca, another film of rhetorical tickling and broken hearts that, like Blue moon, transforms a bar into a velvety limbo from which we would never want to leave.