Good movie but grossly overrated

Fantastic!

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

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.

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.

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.

'Sex' raises more questions than it answers. Particularly what exactly was director Gough Lewis trying to achieve here, what is his relationship with Annabel Chong and what does she think she is going to get out of this? The porn industry is sleazy. We know that. People are exploited. We know that too. Chong is profoundly screwed up. Not much of a surprise there. She unconvincingly uses feminist psycho-babble to justify her actions. Okay. All this documentary does is make Chong look pathetic and misguided. We never understand what REALLY motivates her to participate in such extreme behavior as "the world's biggest gang bang". There are no genuine insights about Chong, or sexuality, or human relationships, or anything else. In that sense this movie is a failure, but an interesting one. Worth a look, just don't expect much.