SEX: THE ANNABEL CHONG STORY
A film review by Christopher Null
Copyright 2000 filmcritic.com
filmcritic.com
The funny dilemma about SEX: THE ANNABEL CHONG STORY is this: Annabel Chong (aka Grace Quek) has one of the more interesting porn star bios around. Born in Singapore, raised in London, and studying at USC, she decided almost on a whim to go into adult movies, culminating in the starring role of THE WORLD'S BIGGEST GANGBANG, wherein she had sex with 251 men in 10 hours. Getting inside this head would be fascinating... but documentarian Gough Lewis does such a bad job of it we leave the theater more confused than anything else.
Annabel's story is an atypical one as porn starlet studies go. She's got a real head on her shoulders, she's a rabid spokesperson for feminist rights, she seems really nice in person, spends time with her family, and has some of the worst teeth in show biz. But the strangest part is that Annabel doesn't seem to be in it for the money. In fact, she still doesn't have the 10 grand for her "performance" in GANGBANG, which she continually expresses nothing but nostalgia over, saying it was a glorious "moment" she experienced between the men and herself.
Annabel gets stranger from there. One minute she's pounding her chest about women's rights, the next she's a ball of gibberish. The more one listens to her, the less coherent she sounds... in fact, she ends up being exactly what you'd expect a porn star to be like.
Lewis doesn't play up much of this, instead preferring to dwell on disease issues, an invented rivalry with Jasmin St. Clair (who broke Annabel's record with 300 men a year later), the tired issue of "her parents don't know!", and the minutiae of Annabel's twisted version of feminism. Little that she says makes sense, and most of the laughs in the film are at her expense. (Though wildly entertaining are her detractors, who think her "experiment" has somehow cheapened the adult industry.)
While the stars of movies like THE GIRL NEXT DOOR are much shallower, SEX blows every opportunity to get inside the twisted head of its subject. Then again, maybe there was nothing to see inside there in the first place. Oh well.
RATING: **1/2
|------------------------------|
\ ***** Perfection \
\ **** Good, memorable film \
\ *** Average, hits and misses \
\ ** Sub-par on many levels \
\ * Unquestionably awful \
|------------------------------|
MPAA Rating: NR
Director: Gough Lewis Producer: Hugh F. Curry, David Whitten, Gough Lewis Starring: Grace Quek / Annabel Chong, John Bowen, Ed Powers
No web site.
--- Christopher Null - null@filmcritic.com - http://www.filmcritic.com
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