The late Candida Royalle, after a highly successful and uninhibited acting career, pioneered a genre of Couples Romances as writer-director and created a lasting legacy. "The Bridal Shower", shot back to back with "One Size Fits All", demonstrates exactly what she was driving at, and is elegantly realized by the unique auteur.
The five concise vignettes are presented largely in flashback, as the five female friends meet to give bride-to-be Missy presents for her upcoming nuptials. Each of the other women lends her the benefit of their own experience in marriage and romance, while Missy provides an illustrated fantasy sequence, perhaps the show's highlight, as she tells pal Nina Hartley of her lust for her, and we see Nina, Missy and the groom Mickey G. in a sensual threesome in the kitchen. This fantasy sequence is executed bareback, as Mickey and Missy are a real-life couple so a condom is not necessary when he humps her.
Condom use is kept to a minimum in the rest of the feature, because Royalle likes to shoot explicit sex scenes mainly from soft-core angles, a subtle approach which probably makes this video and her other similar efforts way off the mainstream for today's Adult Cinema audience, which demands "in your face" explicitness. Similarly, there are zero money shots in this feature, with each scene ending organically, not forcing the male performer to pull out and show "evidence" of the climax of lovemaking.
Candida's eye for beauty is demonstrated in the very colorful palette that is on display in each shot, quite different from today's "skin tones" dominated porn. Flowers, nature and other niceties fill the frame, with romantic lighting completing the picture. The casting is all about inner beauty, as Candida effectively brings back such icons as Sharon Kane and Porsche Lynn (plus the on-going indefatigable Hartley) rather than opting for the "fresh meat" that almost defines 21st Century porn, and especially the current audience where almost all the big stars are of the jail-bait (Riley Reid, Piper Perri, Elsa Jean, etc.) variety.
