Jump Tomorrow

On the brink of an arranged marriage with a childhood friend, a quiet young man (Tunde Adebimpe) is smitten with a woman he meets in an airport (Natalia Verbeke). Egged on by another new friend (Hippolyte Girardot), he pursues her on his way to his own wedding, postponing a decision as long as he can. Writer/director Joel Hopkins’ feature debut, a romantic-comedy-cum-road-picture (expanded from an award-winning student short), gets off to a slow start while Hopkins finds his footing—pacing uncertain, compositions clunky and flat. In time, the film’s loopy ingenuousness becomes endearing, as do the opposites-attract performances of Adebimpe and Verbeke, and the ebullience of Girardot as a romantic but manic-depressive Frenchman. James Wilby plays Verbeke’s pompous, self-absorbed boyfriend.