Sad, true `Sex' gets intimate with Chong

Movie review

XX 1/2 "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story," with Grace Quek (a k a Annabel Chong), John Bowne, Ed Powers. Directed by Gough Lewis. 86 minutes. Varsity, today through Thursday. No rating; includes profanity, graphic sex scenes.

"Amazing Grace" gets a whole new twist in this sad but true documentary about a Singapore-raised porn star, Annabel Chong, otherwise known as Grace Quek.

The hymn plays under the closing credits of "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story," delivering the final ironic comment on a woman whose greatest claim to fame is that she had sex with 251 men in 10 hours.

This was accomplished on Jan. 19, 1995, partly as an attempt to earn notoriety (she doubled the world record set by an Amsterdam sex worker), and partly as an act of feminist liberation.

She was a 22-year-old California undergraduate in gender studies at the time. She had also been the victim of a gang rape in London in 1991.

The movie, which is sloppily assembled but undeniably fascinating, opens with Grace / Annabel confessing her stunt on "The Jerry Springer Show."

Defiantly unconcerned about the potential for contracting HIV, she claims to believe that "sex is good enough to die for . . . I'm not gonna regret it - I lived!"

The star of such porn epics as "I Can't Believe I Did the Whole Team," "More Dirty Debutantes No. 37" and "What's a Nice Girl Like You Doing in an Anal Movie?," she believes in her star status. Discussing a new project, she declares that "it'll be the world's greatest (sex) scene because I am Annabel Chong."

One porn expert claims that Chong's a star because she's "100 percent genuine."

Looking envious about the record she set, porn director Chi Chi LaRue says, "You've gotta give her credit." But the male star of "Oral Majority" seems indignant.

"It just gives porn a bad name," he says without a hint of irony. There is also lofty talk of offering "a more unified approach to human sexuality" and a defense of sex for money ("why is that wrong?").

How does one organize a semi-public orgy that became a video best seller? The first-time director, Gough Lewis, plays with the absurdity of the situation, throwing in a pep talk in which the director of Chong's big moment talks to dozens of naked males about maintaining their enthusiasm. But little else about the film is amusing.

As her name suggests, Grace / Annabel leads a double life. She is praised by one professor for her writing abilities; she graduated from the University of Southern California in 1998, then went back into porn.

"I don't want my parents to know," she says at one point. But she also believes they'll still love her: "I have no doubt that parents will come around to it . . . I'm going to make them proud of me."

One man thinks she's an introvert, really "quite shy," and there are moments when she comes across as lost. "Now is the time to die, whatever," she says when confronted with evidence that not all the men were properly examined before they had intercourse with her.

At other times, she just seems desperate. "I've just gotta feel something," she says as she takes a razor to her arm.