Point to any one of the near 300 films at this year’s Melbourne International Film Festival (MIFF) and you will likely find a luminary vision of imperfection. For three weeks Melbourne’s cinemas housed testaments to the incapable, the broken, and the mediocre.

Richard Linklater brings his signature brand of sentimental naturalism to Blue Moon, a loving portrait of the famous lyricist Lorenz Hart (Ethan Hawke) set over one night seven months before his death. It is 1943: Oklahoma! has just opened on Broadway, the first of many shows from Hart’s long-time collaborator Richard Rodgers to come out of his new partnership with Oscar Hammerstein II. Unsurprisingly, Hart leaves the theatre early and heads to a nearby bar called Sardis.