After a rough work-from-home day, Josephine, nicknamed Jo (Ito Aghayere), decides to accept an invitation from her friend, Maya (Deborah Lukumuena), to stay at her place in Paris. Jo immediately catches a tour guide’s eye, and Jesse Williams plays that tour guide, Toussaint, so it seems like a win. “Montmartre” (2026) is mostly about their time together and is utterly gorgeous, but writer and director Leon Hendrix III’s debut feature’s story needs a lot of work.
Cinematographer Junior Pereira’s work in his first feature film will make you wish that “Montmartre” was a silent film. Every single scene looks romantic and warm. Every piece of glass or anything remotely blue, which includes Williams’ eyes, feels as if Tiffany & Co. had a silent sponsorship of this film. The wooden objects are such rich varieties of brown that they do not seem like ordinary pieces of furniture but vibrate with the energy of their owners infusing a delicate, deliberate sense of taste to every moment. If there is a sense of magic, it is thanks to Pereira, and hopefully filmmakers will take notice and start hiring him so he can do more. He is the film’s MVP.
If the production department’s Ella Godfrey is responsible for choosing locations, then she nailed it. “Montmartre” delivered on its promise of not hitting the usual spots that films capture when set in the 18th arondissement. While it was clearly tourism porn, it also felt grounded, special and lived in as if the locations probably had special significance to Hendrix albeit he does not always convey that meaning to the audience. Also, the US opening and closing sequence in North Carolina is isolated, autumnal, spacious, minimalist and peaceful, which was unexpected, but a terrific way to introduce Jo.
Jo makes good money and can afford this lifestyle because she is the worst. Bravo to Hendrix for daring to make an unlikable woman, but later when a character claims, “I can see the light in you,” I thought, “Do you? Is it the light from ‘Poltergeist?’” She works for health insurance companies and commits shady acts to discover reasons to kick people off their health insurance. If she was just an assassin killing for money, then that person would at least be fun at parties and have scintillating conversation. The woman that she busts reads her to filth, and it is the first and last time someone assesses her accurately instead of excusing Jo because of her past. Over the course of “Montmartre,” she does nothing to prove that deep down inside she is actually a great person having an off day, recognizes that she needs a new career or needs to reassess how she navigates the world preferring shallow over substantive interactions. Because Aghayere is beautiful and talented, it is easy to try to transfer those qualities on to the character, especially since Aghayere’s performance appears that she is on her character’s side, and if she thinks otherwise, there is no hint of it, but lots of actors play villains as the heroes of their own story. Either Hendrix left too much on the cutting room floor or was more interested in Toussaint’s musings to develop either character in a substantial fashion.
Disclaimer: “Montmartre” is billed as a drama, but the majority feels like a romance, which means to a former family law attorney, it looks like a bunch of red flags in a trench coat pretending to be a potentially perfect couple. Like most films involving a woman traveling to escape the troubles of daily life, this film has a slight advantage because instead of just appearing at the film’s bookends, the sassy best friend does make an appearance while Jo is staying at Maya’s place though they do nothing together except talk about men thus failing the Bechdel test miserably. Hendrix is great at writing male centric women so if you do not mind watching a film with an alleged woman protagonist who only talks about her dad or her current date, not her hopes and dreams for herself other than feeling vaguely connected, which is a valid theme if it was more fleshed out, then this movie will not disappoint.
Based on “Montmartre,” connected means to her paternal family though her mom is living, and their relationship is vaguely turbulent. Connected also means to a romantic partner, not friends or a raison d’être; thus, the importance and centering of Toussaint. Men define Jo, and her entire self tries to submerge herself into his existence then bristles when it is not possible because damn, it has only been a few days. Because Williams plays Toussaint, the thumb is on the scale for liking this character regardless of any of his objective qualities though he has some. Toussaint describes the neighborhood as Harlem on the Seine. A lot of the dialogue only offers snippets of information, and it is the one time where prose dumping more substantially about the history of a place would be welcomed because at least then one could walk away from the movie with something more than vibes. Historically Black people escaped to Paris to have full lives without fear or roadblocks, and a lot of those lives were higher callings to an artistic life. Do not expect that here. When they visit one location that appears to be a bookstore or a place archiving periodicals, you are going to learn almost nothing about the place, but will have to be satisfied with watching them frolic in the space, which is fine if it is all that you are looking for.
Hendrix through Maya admonishes Jo, who is also an audience surrogate, to filter the movie in the following way, “Not everything has to be. It’s about the feeling.” A lot of younger audiences want an experience more than a story so this movie could be this generation’s “Before Sunrise” (1995). “Montmartre” showcases beautiful people in beautiful places saying things that are supposed to sound profound but may seem like a lot for two people who just met. The actors are convincing in never breaking character at how ridiculously overwrought their characters are about their relationship in a short period of time.
If moviegoers were to have a pop quiz immediately after watching “Montmartre” and expected to explain salient facts about the characters, they may fail. Toussaint is a bon vivant with artistic ambitions who left the US, but it appears that his family is also in Paris. He waxes poetic about jazz, pastries, rubbing women statues’ titties (not kidding, not cool, call me the humorousless liberal, don’t care, huge turnoff), etc. To be fair, the bar is in hell. Prior to the trip, Jo was dating Crypto Boy (whom Hendrix plays and is also hot), and the moniker is fitting so Toussaint’s conversation does benefit from the comparison. He introduces Jo to a jazz singer friend (Brisa Roché), his encouraging cousin Theresa (Melanie Nicholls-King), and one unexpected visitor (Firmine Richard) who shatters Jo’s unspoken assumptions about Toussaint, a man that she has known for fewer days than fingers on one hand. What!?!
If you think it is flirting for a couple to constantly tease and snip at each other or erupt into a disagreement at least once daily, then “Montmartre” is perfect for you, but newsflash: the best couples actually enjoy being together and do not have disagreements that look like this. It is not playful to be mean to a potential partner so if that works for you, great, but it screams unable to relate to people without negging them. Why did she think that they had a connection, and why was he trying so hard to fix her? If a woman whom you just met accuses you of basically spiritually cheating with a woman that you are not even shown talking to, this is not great. I want so much better for these fictional people.
“Montmartre” ends showing that Jo got whatever she was looking for in Paris and finds her connection, but the details of that connection had the lawyer in me glitching. New Yorkers will always miss the point when it comes to real estate and stick to the cold, hard logistics. The point of the film is to paint Jo as wanting certainty and her encounter with Toussaint makes her willing to forgo that certainty in exchange for magic, which is a nice sentiment, but again, is not quite embodied in either character’s trajectory over the course of the film. It seems as if Jo really wanted magic because she took a ton of chances based on no evidence from the beginning even with Crypto Boy and her love of the movies. She also did not want certainty but wanted absolutes or rules that govern how to navigate the universe, but this issue is underdeveloped considering there is no resolution with her mother, only her cousin, Jimmy (Maurice D. Hendrix). She is still avoiding resolving all her real, problematic existing personal and professional relationships in favor of just starting over so her behavior and expectations are not aligned. Nothing is actually resolved, just shifted for now. How does her time with Toussaint point her in this direction? There are missing links to bridge her reaction psychologically, but let’s be gracious and just say everything does not have to make sense like a math formula. The relationship motivates her to focus on the foundation
“Montmartre” reflects that Hendrix may not be at the right stage in his life to tackle the issues that interest him. There is nothing wrong with being juvenile (expect pastry dick and vagina jokes, which are random but fine) if that makes him happy or have a light, vacation fling movie. He may want to make two different movies about dealing with Jo’s history versus her dissatisfaction with daily life because he did not blend them in this movie. He needed to devote more thought to his characters or commit to a shallower romance that skips along the surface, but watching the pebble sink after it stops gliding across the surface makes everything grind to a halt and m feel like watching a car wreck that bills itself as a Honda, not a Pinto. Still because he has such an eye for making everything look great while collaborating with editor Ismail Salahuddin to make expressive montages, he could just make contemporary silent films and leave the dialogue to someone else. He has an eye!
