Preview: “Afrodite Superstar”

This week in New York a whole crowd of East Coast smartypants-types made their way into the auditorium at the New School for Social Research to check out a sneak peek of "Afrodite Superstar", the debut film in Candida Royalle's new Femme Chocolat line. All the films in the line will be made by women of color and feature people of color in the cast—and none will feature box cover copy that includes phrases like "juicy booty" or "phat taco". Hopefully their absence will not confuse those fans who rely on porn copy writers to let them know what a movie is about.

What the movie is about is a young lady named Afrodite, played with humor and (gasp!) acting skill by Simone Valentino, who gets transformed from a black American princess into a gangsta rapper overnight after meeting a sexy producer named CEO (played by the ever-smooth Mr. Marcus). Besides all the hotness and chemistry between performers, the plot is really engaging, and we don't even feel the need to add on the disclaimer "for a porno movie" at the end of that sentence.

Though the version screened at the New School was mostly softcore for the tender sensibilities of the intellectual crowd, the flashes of flesh we did see were very enticing indeed, especially the finale scene featuring a sizzling coupling between Simone Valentino and Mr. Marcus that actually made us utter the word "Sweet!" out loud in a dark and quiet movie theater. It's not often you see two performers laughing and enjoying themselves during a sex scene instead of making faces like they're slaughtering a suckling pig, but Simone and Marcus delivered and then some. Reports that they continued with the hanky panky after the cameras stopped rolling have been confirmed. -AR

· Femme Chocolat (femmechocolat.com)

· Candida Royalle (candidaroyalle.com)