A college professor (Brian Runbeck) is about to have his comfortable worldview upset. He accepts an invitation to visit a former student, Candida (Caroline Strong), but instead finds she has become a siren with a live-in transvestite "slave" Rudolph (Neil Levine). Candida peppers her reminiscences about the Italian classes she attended nine years previous with Latin sayings and suggestive remarks. Her offer of a fun time in the bedroom prompts the professor's hasty retreat. As he muses in his office over this episode, another former student appears.
Coiffed as a Renaissance beauty, Nancy (Alex McCord) reveres him as a father figure but not more, given her religious vows. (This nun was truly incognito without even her order's ring on.) After her, a young black woman Kenia (Toks Olagundoye) will hear of nothing except sex in exchange for a passing grade. She gets the latter, but not without leaving her panties behind and maybe sparking some regret at a missed opportunity. Realizing that he has power not only over his female students' minds but also their bodies may be enough for our professor to survive at least a few mid-life crises to come.
Author Mario Fratti can always be counted on to provide well-written scripts with clear motivations. Overall, Candida and Her Friends is a rather tame retelling of a man's choice between sensual and chaste love. Inserting the Rudolph character is first of all a reminder that political correctness has had its greatest flowering on college campuses. Second, it reduces the characters' actions to mere choices in a moral vacuum. This is in spite of some high-flying talk about family values.
Caroline Strong never suggests the conflicts that schoolteacher by day, high-class hooker by night day Candida must feel. Perhaps Roi Escudero needed to find a costume for her with more of a mixed message than an open-back red dress. Toks Olagundoye is believable as calculating student Kenia more for her looks than her acting technique. Alex McCord's excellent training is palpable, but Michael Hillyer robs her impact by imposing a direction more suitable for film or TV. Brian Runbeck seems to enjoy utilizing every angle of Mark Symczak's sets. True to form as a serious prof, he begins stiffly and only gradually warms up to his new possibilities.
