LOVE REQUIRES CHOCOLATE

A 17-year-old Black American girl is determined to have the best love-free semester in Paris possible with the help of her extensive bucket list and a grudging tour guide.

Aspiring triple threat Whitney Curry is finally living her dreams in Paris. Despite the city’s reputation for romance, she’s determined to eschew love in favor of sightseeing and doing research for her senior thesis, a one-woman play about the life of her idol, Josephine Baker. But the perfect start she imagined is immediately derailed. Whitney alienates her roommates, Belgian Nora and Swiss Sophie, clashes with her (unfairly) handsome and grumpy French tutor, Thierry, and finds her classes more intimidating than expected. So when Thierry rescues her from a sticky situation, Whitney sees her chance to salvage her semester with a deal: If he guides her around Paris, she’ll write the good tutoring review he needs to end his suspension from his soccer team. The added bonus? His grumpiness will make it easy to keep him at arm’s length—or so she thinks. Whitney and Thierry are easy to root for: Their romance is sweet, and the story is suitably escapist, reminiscent of ’90s rom-coms. But the imbalance in time devoted to their relationship versus Whitney’s project, combined with various underdeveloped themes, all results in a final act that feels rushed, confusing, and unearned. Several main characters are Black, including Thierry; Sophie is implied to be queer.

A sweet, escapist romance that stumbles due to some inconsistencies.