I suppose it would come as a shock to groups like the American Family Association to know that women indulge in the same kind of locker room banter about sex as men do. Maybe not as colorfully and with the degrees of exaggeration, but that's the basic story behind Passages, a tender, highly charged sexual filmabout discovery and all of its glories and tears.

Jennifer Stewart and Christy Canyon play two college roommates. Christy, who gets a scorcher of a scene to do with Blake palmer, is the hardened, world-wary voice of experience. This entitles her, I suppose, to the bottom half of the bunk bed in the dorm room. Have you noticed that in all these coming-of-age films the Yoda person always gets the bottom half?

Their room is quiet and dark and we see a flashlight. First off, someone's lifting an idea from Carnal Knowledge. Secondly, Stewart reveals she hasn't done IT. You know, IT. there are two things to look for in movies. There's the soldier who talks about going home and marrying his girl. You just know the next grenade's got his name on it. And when a guy or a girl says the hasn't done IT, Mr. or Miss Louse steps into their life. Enter Marc Wallice. This guy has trouble written all over his dick, and Stewart falls like an oil price at a cartel meeting.

Their first love scene together is forbidden and tempestuous, and I have to scribble it in as an upcoming awards nominee. It has moves and passion and touching and realism and all kinds of stuff you don't see much of anymore in adult flicks. When Stewart goes "yuch" because she gets Wallice's semen all over her hands, I'm instantly reminded of the time I was trying to doggie his virgin and missed my target by a couple of feet. "You went to the bathroom in my hair!" she screamed. Well, Stewart's character is all that in Passages, wrapped in that one tell-all sentence.

When Stewart's voice reaches piercing, emotional octaves that could crack a windshield on a Sunday school bus, you know you're dealing with maybe the only females performer in the biz who could carry the dofus virgin role off as convincingly. Here's a girl who genuinely doesn't have a clue when it comes to sex, so all those terrific scenes of Christy showing her how to find her clitoris, achieve a greater degree of poignancy.

One comment in passing. There's a sidebar in which Peter North plays this succubus guy, the "Dreamlover" who visits the girls in their sleep and balls their brains out. Outside of plugging an old Bobby Darin tune, this plot device leaves little more than to have an extra sex scene or two. Now, while some reviewers will give you a b.s. line about purity, and integrity of plot sub-structure, me I'm going out to get the record. The power of suggestion, baby.

An absolute must feature film.