Blue Moon (2025) (American premiere, in person: Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott)

Richard Linklater: Blue Moon (US 2025) with Margaret Qualley (Elizabeth Weiland) and Ethan Hawke (Lorenz Hart).

Larry Gross (TFF 2025): "Lorenz Hart wrote lyrics—”My Funny Valentine,” “The Lady Is a Tramp,” “Blue Moon”—that helped establish 20th-century American popular music as an art form. Richard Linklater, working from Robert Kaplow’s brilliant screenplay (adapted from Hart’s letters), provides a mesmerizing depiction of Hart (played by Ethan Hawke) through a single eventful night as he nears the end of his life. Hart copes with having been cast aside by his musical partner, the composer Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott), a romantic infatuation with a much younger woman (Margaret Qualley) and his terminal affair with alcohol. Linklater’s film is urbane, witty and heartbreaking, and Scott, Qualley and Bobby Cannavale, as a philosophical bartender, offer terrific support. Hawke, on camera for every scene, is astonishing from first moment to last, sharp-tongued, nearly out-of-control, soulful and not-quite broken. BLUE MOON provides the painful elegance and beauty of a song by Rodgers and Hart." –LG (U.S./Ireland., 2025, 100m) In person: Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke, Andrew Scott

AA: Telluride Film Festival pays tribute to Ethan Hawke with two films exploring American musical legacy. They could not be more different. Highway 99 A Double Album is a portrait documentary of the country & western legend Merle Haggard. Blue Moon is a chamber play set in the terminal period of Lorenz Hart, lyricist of many of the greatest entries in the Great American Songbook (Broadway, musical theatre, Hollywood musical). A common denominator is the battle with alcohol.

The premiere of Oklahoma! composed by Richard Rodgers (Andrew Scott) with his new lyricist partner Oscar Hammerstein II (Simon Delaney) turns into an evening of humiliation for Lorenz who is accompanied by his protégée Elizabeth Weiland (Margaret Qualley). The long and successful partnership of Hart and Rodgers is about to end because of Lorenz's alcoholism. 

Blue Moon is the ninth Ethan Hawke movie directed by Richard Linklater, and it is the result of a 12-year period of gestation. Linklater wanted to wait until Hawke was ready for it. In a superb performance, Hawke incarnates the brilliant but flawed protagonist with absolute conviction. The result is completely different from what we have seen from the Hawke before.

Based on the correspondence of Lorenz Hart and Elizabeth Weiland, Blue Moon is full of wit, great music and brilliant performances. There is not a weak link. The monologues and dialogues are fantastic, worthy of Golden Age Hollywood movies like All About Eve, but an irresistible cinematic flow is missing.