Starring Ethan Hawke. Rated 14A.

Ethan Hawke doesn’t exactly resemble young Chet Baker, the introspective trumpet player who became an unlikely matinee idol in the 1950s, thanks to his James Dean looks and his unexpected singing skills. But in Born to Be Blue he fully conveys the fragile apartness that marked Baker’s art and persona.

Canadian writer-director Robert Budreau enjoys the jazz-club atmosphere of the postwar era and pays surface attention to the Tupac/Notorious B.I.G.–type rivalry (sans violence) between the largely black hard-bop players in New York and the more studio-based musicians, mostly white, in Los Angeles. But there’s no attempt to convey the intense cross-breeding within and between the two movements. The script repeatedly refers to West Coast swing—more a 1930s dance revival right now—when fans often called it cool jazz or California-style, even if that highly arranged approach was pioneered by the easterner Miles Davis (who comes across as a heavy here).

The nicely shot tale jumps between the early ’50s and the late ’60s, with zero acknowledgment of rock music’s jazz-killing ascendancy. Hawke stays focused, but his Baker stays in a vacuum, with no hint of colleagues like Dave Brubeck, Art Pepper, and especially Gerry Mulligan, with whom he led several bands. This fictionalized take offers the intriguing conceit of reducing all his romantic interests to one, played safely by the U.K.’s Carmen Ejogo, sporting an endless supply of cute outfits (remarkable for someone living in a VW van) and a wavering accent.

Budreau doesn’t really take his stylized (and no doubt underbudgeted) approach far enough into dreamland, relying instead on repetitive biopic clichés. He also asks Hawke to supply the subtext missing from his blunt script, and his lead delivers, even on the vocal front. Much like the upcoming Hank Williams flick, I Saw the Light, this Born identity can only click with a curiously narrow audience: know too much about the protagonist and his world, and you’ll be pissed at the baffling inaccuracy and missing context; know too little and you just get lost.