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Sex: The Annabel Chong Story (1999) More at IMDbPro »

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25 out of 26 people found the following comment useful :-
A deeply flawed film that still deserves to be seen., 15 June 2002

Author: voxhumana from Sydney, Australia

This is not a well-crafted documentary, and no doubt film students will pick it to pieces. BUT, it is certainly a compelling and unforgettable piece of cinema, and one that raises many more questions than it answers.

The film is as tasteful as is possible, given its subject matter. Annabel Chong (Grace Quek) is an exceptionally complex human being: highly intelligent yet quite psychologically damaged. Watching the film is like being on amphetamines - the first half is hyper-frenetic and luridly self-congratulatory, but then the "come-down" happens. And when it comes, it hits hard.

I did some follow-up research. Ironically, this documentary gave Annabel Chong the financial rewards that her gang-bang didn't, and she earned enough to buy a house and return to college. She is currently completing a course in web-design/networking. She appears to be earning her living by operating a website that combines her discussions of Windows 2000 installations with subscriber-only pornographic photos of herself and others. Like the film itself, this historical footnote doesn't give any simple answers either.

As I said, this film is flawed in many ways, (I'll let you decide in what ways) but a few weeks later I still find myself thinking about the issues it raised. And on that score, it deserves a high recommendation.

After much deliberation I gave this film a 9/10 - not because of the film's actual quality (which only deserves a 5-6), but because it is a film that deserves to be seen and contemplated.

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27 out of 31 people found the following comment useful :-
Difficult and depressing viewing, 10 January 2005

Author: Mr Ben from Hampshire, England

I'm sure we all remember the story. "Woman Sleeps With 250 Men In One Day". As a teenager (at the time), this was the kind of news that I was interested in although clearly, she did much more with these guys than sleep. The name of Annabel Chong has passed into legend and is the subject of this documentary from Gough Lewis. Unoriginal name not withstanding, it is a twisted piece of propaganda. While the various sleaze-balls who appear may think that Lewis is doing them a favour, the end result is a damning expose of how a industry motivated purely by sex and money chewed up and spat out one of its biggest stars.

Chong, real name Grace Quek, had only appeared in a couple of minor porn films before being plucked from obscurity by porn director John T. Bone to appear in a pet project he was working on. The World's Largest Gangbang would feature 300 men "passing through" (as he charmingly puts it) one woman and Annabel was his chosen star. In the end, she managed to f*** 251 men in ten hours before health fears brought proceedings to a premature halt. Despite being the star of the show, Chong quickly fell into a downward slide. Never paid for her work, she then left and then returned to porn after her parents (living in Singapore) discovered what their daughter had been doing without their knowledge. Meanwhile, Bone was already making plans to produce a bigger film with another star - determined to beat Chong's world record.

In truth, nobody comes out of this smelling of roses. Chong herself, while having a great body, has a face that is best suited to radio but her reckless attitude to life and other people is what damns her best. She appears, at times, selfish and cavalier towards anything thrown towards her and isn't too bothered about being screwed out of her money by Bone. Which suits him fine - Bone comes across as an uncaring, almost psychotic bastard, fawning over his star before and during the shoot and almost completely ignoring her afterwards. While it is a truth universally acknowledged that the porn industry isn't exactly on equal footing with mainstream movies, this truth is ultimately brought home when the tears begin to flow. Chong herself looks a nervous wreck, smoking like a trooper in interviews and shaking like Ozzy Osbourne. She gets no sympathy from her fellow porn actors and actresses who accuse her of aiming for the big time on purpose. Nothing could be further from the truth - the victim of a brutal gang rape while studying in London, Chong's porn career appears as another form of self-destruction. We see her self-harming and admitting that she hates her body but Lewis never asks the questions you want to ask so we don't know for sure.

Chong's story is a tragic tale of depravity and exploitation. Rejected by her peers, forgotten by her director and left to fend for herself in the aftermath of her marathon ordeal, Chong makes a hopeless heroine as you realise that she is no more capable of looking after herself as an elderly woman who's just fallen down the stairs. Emotionally crippled and physically abused, the sight of Chong blundering along the way makes for depressing viewing and you can't help but feel for her and her friends and family. Chong is the ultimate morality tale, appearing to live the dream which all-too-soon turns into a nightmare. "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story" is an effective documentary, merely portraying what is happening as opposed to Michael Moore's sledgehammer approach in docs like "Fahrenheit 9/11". The problem is Lewis's agenda is never revealed and the viewer is left to make their own minds up. Not a problem if you can relate to this (which I can, indirectly) but if you can't, this film will depress and disgust you.

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20 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
or, the rise and fall of Grace Quek., 26 April 2000

Author: margarita nikolaevna (hitch1899_@hotmail.com) from moscow, russia

For about half its length, ANNABEL CHONG is a bright, light, unexpected, vibrant, witty documentary. Annabel Chong is Grace Quek, a Singapore-raised English anthropology student at the University of South California, who became a porn actress after an unenlightened feminist tutorial, as an expression of sexual freedom. She became famous in 1995 when she broke the world record for sleeping with the most men (251 in ten hours), and became a fixture on programmes like THE JERRY SPRINGER SHOW.

Grace herself is a very likeable, seemingly together young woman, with the teeth of Goldie and the accent of Jane Seymour, who decides to become a 'stud' to critique masculinity. She seems in complete control of her career and her image, and, as her world record is revealed straight away, there is no conventionally contrived documentary 'success'.

The film is sharply funny as it explores the strangely haphazard and hugely lucrative pornography industry. Many of its denizens, with amusingly childishly suggestive names, find Annabel's antics distasteful and degrading, confirming the image of sleaze the constant display of computers are trying to conceal. The marketing men are either aging, pony-tailed relics who are easy to laugh at, or the younger, can't-quite-believe-their-luck jocks who can't stop giggling.

Unfortunately things become more sinister as the pressure begins to tell on Annabel. She is quite clearly not in control, and the film constantly undermines her claims to independence, as she dances for a bunch of slavering perverts. These latter don't care what incomprehensible post-structuralist jargon comes out of her mouth, as long as she delivers the goods. In fact, this feminist liberation goes beyond their wildest dreams - a woman who is actually looking to them for it.

This we might have expected, but more repulsive revelations begin to leak out. Not only do we assume that she is tacitly forced into the event by leeches who can see a sucker from a mile off, but she isn't paid, she is quickly abandoned for an even more photogenic cash-cow, and most horrific of all, we discover that the health and safety standards for the event were criminally lax.

This becomes a deeply and properly misanthropic film in which, I think, the filmmakers, if I may say so under IMDb guidelines, collude. Produced and directed by men, the film is formally weighted against Annabel. The more images and 'reality' contradict Annabel, the less we listen to her voice, the more we listen to others, squeezing her out. Music (for instance the repetition of 'Amazing Grace') is used to ironise Annabel, and there are a number of occasions when the film's ethics are seriously in question, and not just the obvious contrivances of many scenes.

Little 'narratives' are slipped into the story (eg does Annabel have AIDS?). In one, she hasn't yet told her mother, and the film uses this very private and damaging dilemma to generate suspense. Frequently, Annabel doesn't seem to be in control, and yet the filmmakers watch her slashing her wrists so they can offer a neat thesis on different penetrations of the body. The film is careful to record the different groups of men who use and belittle Annabel (TV shows, the porn industry, her old teachers, Cambridge students etc.), but don't seem to notice their own culpability.

The film becomes seriously depressing , and while it is quite right to give an audience lured by the sensationalist title a shock, a play with gender identity, a critique of filmmaking itself, the filmmakers seem to have crossed a line, where they have become as exploitative as the porn producers. In one scene they revisit the site of a rape; in another they gang up with us and an informed teacher on an unknowing Annabel. The frequent shots from outside looking in invoke a voyeuristic model, and maybe the documentary is intensely self-aware, but the increasingly moralistic drive is only at the expense of Annabel Chong.

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18 out of 21 people found the following comment useful :-
Good luck Grace, 28 July 2003
Author: Chris Bright from London

A number of the comments here seem way off the mark to me. Saying this woman is messed up & needs therapy and going on to complain that she's ugly says more about the commenter than the commented upon in my view.

I guess all documentaries are constructed in such a way as to put forward an argument, but here again, some people are complaining about hidden agendas whereas others are complaining that not enough conclusions are drawn and demanding pat psychological explanations. It seems to me that the film presents you with the facts and asks you to decide for yourself what to think about them, and that that's no bad thing.

I liked Grace by the end of the film. It's clear she has some issues and she's chosen a pretty unconventional way of working through them, but I don't think it's anyone's place to judge her. I'm glad to hear she's made some money from the documentary at least and seems to be doing OK in her new life as a computer geek. Interesting use of the word "geek" actually - now means computer buff, used to mean circus freak.

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15 out of 18 people found the following comment useful :-
A muddled character study – or rather a study of a muddled character!, 13 August 2002
Author: bob the moo from Birmingham, UK

The porn star Annabel Chong prepares for her part in the world record gang bang. This documentary examines her roots in the business and follows her before and after the shoot to find out why she's doing porno and what her background is. We see her as a real complex person who is seemingly unsure of what her motivations are for doing the work she does.

The `porn documentary' is an area that is becoming more popular as porn becomes more mainstream. I have seen several – some that aim to just have a laugh (The Legend of Ron Jeremy) and some that are brutally honest (Hardcore). This was one of the first I'd seen and I wasn't sure what the agenda was behind it. For the most part I don't think the makers had any aim but to be honest but fair. This takes us to Chong herself as this is a look at her rather than a look at the business she's in.

Chong changes her story during the film. For some of it she is a porn star who is doing it because it's `the ultimate ego trip' to have all these men wanting to have sex with her. Then we find out more about her teenage gang rape and the whole porn stuff looks different. Later however she lost my vote when she appeared at a Cambridge Uni debate and on channel 4's The Girly Show (that height of political debate) talking about how it was `a p*ss take on the whole western ideal of masculinity' and similar pretentious sounding remarks. That's fine if what you're doing is art, but porn is not art. If you are in any doubt her Cambridge debate is preceded by her boasting about loving anal sex and her pride at doing triple penetration – how very Van Gogh!

She comes off very mixed up. At times very reasonable and normal, others very OTT and really into getting f*cked by as many guys as she can then at others we see her tearful confession to her mother and see her slicing up her arm with a knife just so that she can `really feel something'. It's hard to know how to feel about her because she doesn't seem to know who she is and why she's doing the things she does.

For the most part the film just about manages to remain tasteful. It doesn't focus on the sex scenes and tries to have plenty of character study rather than whacking material. However it does use a lot of clips and stuff that don't add to the message but really only serve to spice things up. Some of the scenes have a reason – for example the gang bang scenes are in no way erotic and are slightly like watch meat being processed, and Chong has a weird smile the whole time. But some from the start of her career are just there to show off breasts and ass! The only good bit about following her early work is the interviews with directors like John T Bone, Ed Powers, Dick Nasty (here as `Richard'), Ron Jeremy and Robert Black. They don't give much insight into the business but it is clear they don't give much weight to Chong's idea that this is a social comment. In fact they are the first to point out how she was exploited – with many of the performers not having had AIDS tests, and also Chong not getting rich from her day's work.

This is a little hard to take. I watched Hardcore where we see Dick Nasty as an agent for an English girl – pressuring her into things she didn't want to do. So to hear him take the high ground is a little daft. Robert Black is a regular for documentaries and he always make sense because he is honest about porn – `it's f*cking shameful and nasty' he says in `Hardcore' but he does enjoy his work!

Overall this isn't a look at porn but a look at Chong and on that level it isn't great. How can we get who she is when she isn't clear on that herself? It's interesting viewing and slightly depressing to see a woman who is so clearly exploited claiming the artistic high ground, and also seeing someone who is so intelligent (she passes her degree) constantly going back to work in porn. A bit of a muddle but a compelling world to dip into for 90 minutes.......but not any longer than that, thank God.

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12 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
dark side of the American Dream, 1 February 2001
Author: Jared Terry (j.terry_99@wkac.ac.uk)

The Annabel Chong story is as captivating as it is disturbing, rarely has documentary film making been utilised to achieve such an intense and personal profile of an individual. The film charts the porn actress Annabel Chong in her quest to make a porn film with the largest gang-bang ever captured on film, this 'quest' is contrasted with Chong with her family in Singapore and with her professors and classmates at her Californian University. Annabel Chong is an endlessly interesting and perplexing charecter - and an endlessly contradicting character. Credit must be awarded to the director for making such a tight and non-reactionary piece of work, it ends up being an extremely bleak film but the feeling is that this is only a refelection of the truth. The level to which all documentary films should wish to aspire too.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Thoughtful introspective view of one girls trip through life..., 19 July 2004
Author: John (jgumbo@usa.net) from Austin, TX

Several people have commented on the insight this film gives into the porn industry. That may be true, but it's not what this film is about. The events which unfold over 90 minutes in "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story" are more about one girls trip through life and the choices she made along the way. Many of the reviews have been very judgmental and tend to present Grace as disturbed and in need if therapy. This may be true on a certain level (for example the scene of her self-mutilate "cutting" removes any doubt that self-destruction is in the forefront of her personality) but there is much more to this young woman than that. She has substance. She's intelligent. She has a drive to succeed in life and achieve approval from her peers. Many of her personality traits are in paradox to one another...But more to the question; "Is this a good film?" You're damn right it is. A very good documentary the places a vast array of players, institutions and mechanisms into orbit around Grace and unabashedly reveals her ventures into and out of each circumstance from seeking acceptance from family and friends to navigating through the denizens of the porn industry.

An interesting side note: In the scenes where Grace is visiting the set of porn-starlet Jasmin St. Clairs attempt at "shattering her record" of 251 men in 10 hours, Grace appears to be out of her element and somehow trapped in a place she'd rather not be. In comparison to the people around her, she almost seems innocent and out of place. The whole feel of this shoot (while technically the same style) is directly the opposite of her experience. Grace leaves the set feeling dejected and lost. Her naiveté is glaring in this moment. Don't know if anyone else picked up on this, but I did.

In the end, I like Grace. After watching her go through so much self-inflicted agony with such an air of bravado (real or imagined) I can't help myself. She's all heart. It's a shame that her triumphs (participating in the Cambridge Debate, attending USC, moving on to a grad degree) are overshadowed by the darker elements of the film. And lastly, many Thanks to Grace for having the guts to be honest in presenting the story of her life. Remarkable.

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11 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Grim, 10 July 1999

Author: Kinski

This is a horrific film, made all the worse because it's all true. Annabel Chong is an intelligent, articulate middle class student from Singapore, where her parents are so proud that she's managed to get to America.

Unfortunately, what she does in America is make porn films - films like "What's a nice girl like you doing in an anal movie?". This film is structured around her record breaking attempt to have sex with 251 men.

And it is exceptionally grim. En Route, we meet the characters who work in the porn industry, see Annabel's friends and realise that she is very, very screwed up.

This is a snapshot of humanity at its lowest. After watching it, all your liberal assumptions are challenged. A grim but essential film.

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9 out of 11 people found the following comment useful :-
Not That Interesting, 14 March 2005

Author: Theo Robertson from Isle Of Bute , Scotland

I watched this simply because I was intrigued by the write up in the TV Guide which mentioned that Annabel Chong is the porn star who was setting a record for having sex with 251 men in 10 hours . Aren't you also intrigued ?

There's two reasons for a prospective audience to watch this . One is that they're equally intrigued as I was and the second reason is that it sounds like really good masturbation fuel . If you're watching for the second reason you'll be bitterly disappointed since there's very little on screen sex but if you're watching for the sensible reason you'll still be as disappointed as the voyeurs . Ms Chong gives a pretentious neo feminist explanation of why she's doing it , something along the lines of " I'm doing this because I'll be striking a blow against chauvanism and by being in control of the situation I'll be showing that it's the men who are sluts " . I don't think Ms Chong has thought through he reasons fully . Either that or she's not a great communicator

What is obvious is that Annabel Chong is certainly a very unhappy individual who probably needs to use sex in order to boost her esteem in much the same way as a person with a drink problem uses alcohol to boost their self esteem . Sex and alcohol like so many things in life are metaphysical false economies for the human soul . Luckily we see towards the end of the movie the self destruction that being a porn star can bring but Ms Chong unlike the audience can't see the woods for the trees

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7 out of 8 people found the following comment useful :-
Moving and tragic, 30 June 2001

Author: Trevor Gensch (trevorg@consultant.com) from Brisbane, Australia

Intensly personal and moving documentary about the life and times of arguably one of the more well known porn stars - Annabel Chong.

The film covers the time during and following her world record of sleeping with 251 men in 10 hours. We see her preparation for the attempt, the attempt itself and the years following where she was afforded great fame but at a huge personal loss.

Annabel is a very intelligent woman; she studied and graduated from USC in 1998 and from her teachers accounts she is a very articulate writer and thinks very analytically. Its only when she tries to verbalise a lot of what she is thinking that we see the pain, the emotional torment that must be facing her every day of her life.

Her voice is one that seems to be on the verge of breaking down into total incomphrensibility - it falters, pauses and staggers along - fuelled a mind that is providing the information but the mouth cannot process it fast enough.

She is a tortured woman; you can see everyone of those 251 men in her eyes every time the conversation moves around to the record breaking feat. She often justifies it by calling it an experiment; one that shows the empowerment of women over men - she was showing that women can be just as agressive sexually as men.

But the price she has paid for it is great. She did not tell her parents for over two years that she was a porn actress. Though not filmed; the after effects of the revelation are shown graphically; her mother on the floor of her room packing Annabels bag, crying and moaning as she removes all trace of her daughter from her life.

There is a lot to this documentary that is worth discovering. Don't get it just for some mindless titalation - there is little of that during its 86 minute running time. What you do get though is a look into the human condition; a condition that craves acceptance amongst peers, a condition that believes it is in control of its own destiny.

A moving lesson for all.

8 out of 10.

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