Sad portrait of Annabel Chong, real name Grace Quek, a student a USC who became briefly famous for sleeping with 251 men in a 10 hours. A warts and all portrait this is the tale of a woman who got into porn as a way of empowering herself and then found she was not as in control as she thought. Its not a matter of grand tragedy, more quiet desperation. (Eventually she leaves the business only to return a year later.) Its not a happy film. I know Chong was happy with the film and made appearances when the film played around the country. Is it worth seeing? I don't know. Its not bad, but its not compelling. In its way it cautionary tale is almost cliché. The choice is yours.

Probably everyone who has progressed from cell division as the reproductive means of choice has some interest in porn, but if yours runs a little deeper then the "Annabel Chong Story" is a very worthwhile documentary to watch, offering a truthful glimpse behind the scenes. And that's pretty much all there is to say about it.To dispel a few popular notions about this documentary, it's not exploitative other than of Grace Quek's (that's Annabel Chong's real name) exhibitionism save possibly her parents, it doesn't purport to chronicle all minutiae of human sexuality, pornography is probably not the most wholesome business to be and in and this fact can not reasonably be blamed on the documentary (don't kill the messenger), film maker Gough Lewis repudiates the fact that he and Quek were a couple at the beginning of this movie for the patent reason that he wanted to make a movie about Quek and not about their relationship, Quek is neither centerfoldish-statuesque nor is she phenomenally ugly with the "the most crooked teeth ever", if you think her views are bizarre then you have obviously enjoyed the privilege of blissful ignorance of the field of womens' / gender studies and, unsurprisingly, Grace might not be the wholesome waif that you can exchange coy glances over glasses of iced tea at the country fair with. In fact, she probably is a bit of a whore, bless her little heart.In approaching this movie please note that it is a documentary and not a sequel from Playboy's Girl Next Door video franchise, thank you.

Gough Lewis' 'documentary' of Grace Quek aka Annabel Chong's curious route into seemingly willing participant of pornographic films (the most notorious being the 251-man gang bang captured on video) is truly sickening in the level of exploitation going on - both of Chong herself and of the audience who may be drawn to Lewis' film.Chong, a self-hating 'sexology' student, argued that her pornographic rituals stemmed from a need to prove the power of the woman. Or something. Her arguments seemed seriously flawed as she veered from damaged young woman to giggling porn babe. The film is disturbing - even more so when it uses the gang-bang (which took ten hours) as a framing device for the rest of the proceedings.A very weird and unsettling eighty minutes.

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.