Director/Writer:  Christopher Payne   Prod: Stephanie Moon

Choreographers:  Michael Nunn, Billy Trevitt

Starring: Cindy Jourdain, Arionel Vargas, Max Brown

Romantic comedy

Love Tomorrow is purportedly a love story between two dancers, Evie and Oriel, whose eyes meet in the underground and who spend the ensuing time criss-crossing London’s landmarks getting to know each other. Eva (Cindy Jourdain) is evidently hurt and upset and it’s down to Oriel (Arionel Vargas) to tease her story out of her as the film unspools.

Unfortunately, Love Tomorrow fails comprehensively and on several levels. Something like this storyline may have had legs back in the late eighties, but it feels extraordinarily toothless now. The direction is truly unimaginative, leaden, lacks grammar and, considering 8-months was spent working with the dancers, presumably on their acting, there is precious little to show for it.  The script is slow and very basic; much of the dialogue is stilted, magnified by the leads not being natural actors. They do however come alive, with some relief, in the brief moments when they dance. But there are also elementary plot holes that test the viewers patience even further; she sleeps away from home and some random girl’s clothes and trainers fit her perfectly, so she wears them, leaving all her own clothes behind. They then hop on bicycles, which also get forgotten and left somewhere, as they later travel on by cab.

The long-awaited main plot point hangs on a key performance by a qualified actor, Max Brown, but he singularly fails to deliver, for one reason or another, denying the already thin plot any remaining depth or gravitas at all.

The cinematography is dull and flat, although I’m not going to blame the cinematographer, whom I can only imagine was clamouring for some lights, any lights, to help, but the budget didn’t allow. There are also listed two editors and indeed an additional editing consultant, but the pace was excruciatingly slow and I again assume no editor was actually allowed to ‘edit’.

All in all, it very much comes across as a student effort; the sort where one experiments enthusiastically, only to realise in hindsight why one does indeed need proper actors, comprehensive professional lighting, an editor who is listened to and, most importantly, a damn good script, before it is worth going to all the trouble of actually making a film and asking an audience to sit through it.

There was without doubt a huge amount of trust and goodwill afforded this project, which makes it all the more sad that it is so poor. Considering this is the writer director’s second feature and having advertised some sort of pedigree and a huge amount of varied and illustrious support, I am all the more disappointed. You never go through all the effort of going to the cinema in the hope that a film is bad. Andrew Rajan.

LOVE TOMORROW is on general release from 8 November 2013