Born to be blue (2015)

	Also Known As: -
	Year of first release: 2015
	Director: Robert Budreau
	Actors: Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo
	Country: CDN, GB
	Genre: Drama, Romance, Melodrama
	Conditions of visioning: 22.05.2017, Schauburg, Sneak Preview, English with German subtitle
Synopsis: When Chet Baker (Hawke) stars in a film about himself, a romance heats up with his co-star, Jane (Ejogo). Production is shelved when Chet's past comes back to haunt him and it appears he may never play music again but Jane challenges him to mount a musical comeback against all the odds.
Review: Again a biopic. Finally this year has been full of biopics in the Sneak preview! This one at least not to present only the positive side of the character. And Chet Baker is rather presented as the unstoppable, unreliable, selfish and self-destructive junkie who has a gift to bring out emotion in his listeners with some notes of trumpet. Of course the whole romantic and melancholy of his life sweat from the trumpet music and from his voice (this is an amazing job by Ethan Hawke!). His melodramatic life is terrible and by luck compensated by his love for music and the support and help he sees coming from Jane. With regard to Whiplash, the authenticity of jazz stories is much more present and the spirit of competition is almost completely out. The fact that amazing jazz is coming from the suffering, from the poverty and fragility of musicians and composers. The acting of Ethan Hawke is amazing, how he transmits the fragility and love of Chet Baker, and not only his work on the voice, but also the body and facial language. Robert Budreau is not at his first trial to tell about Chet Baker, after his short movie The deaths of Chet Baker, available here. Very good movie and even better, I guess, for jazz fans.
Rating: 7 /10