So much hay was made of Richard Linklater’s Cannes-premiering Nouvelle Vague that you’re liable to forget, just three months prior, his debuting Blue Moon at the Berlinale. Sony Pictures Classics will begin its theatrical release (already putting it one step above the Godard biopic’s Netflix deal) October 17, ahead of which is a trailer featuring Ethan Hawke, Margaret Qualley, Bobby Cannavale, and Silver Bear winner Andrew Scott.
As David Katz said in his review, “Blue Moon, which world-premiered at the Berlinale, is another beautifully personal work from Linklater, full of authorial idiosyncrasies and tics, but distinguishing the film from his corpus is it being the kind you can only make at a mature career stage. It’s not so much that Linklater has nothing to prove––screenplays like Robert Kaplow’s and its rarified, remote milieu of mid-WWII New York theaterland can typically send financiers balking. With a ‘legacy’ career, little favors and gives come your way; for Linklater, maybe his next will be a legitimate awards contender, and new relationships with acting talent can be brought to bear. And different or lower expectations for the end product allow him to really express who he is as an artist at this point in his life.”
Described as “a funny Valentine to old Broadway,” here’s the synopsis: “On the evening of March 31, 1943, legendary lyricist Lorenz Hart confronts his shattered self-confidence in Sardi’s bar as his former collaborator Richard Rodgers celebrates the opening night of his ground-breaking hit musical Oklahoma!“
Find preview and poster below:
