Sex: The Annabel Chong Story

-- Video Business, 11/21/2002

Color, NR (mature themes, graphic sexual content, language), 86 min. VHS $59.99; DVD $29.99

DVD: featurette

Street: Dec. 3, Prebook: now

First Run: L, Feb. 2000, $$1 mil.

Director: Gough Lewis

STRAND

Released more than two years ago in just a few theaters nationwide, Sex: The Annabel Chong Story received more attention than might have been expected, due in part to a skillfully marketed preview at Sundance and the still-in-progress pop-culture mainstreaming of the porn industry. That might surprise some, particularly given that the subject of this well-made but tragically flawed film is an intelligent college student from a good family who found porn fame in a 1995 video in which she had sex with 251 male partners. It should come as no surprise, however, that Chong is now virtually forgotten. Her record was smashed within months in a video made by the same director who never paid her for her work, a fact which Chong rationalizes as something she deserves. Further manipulations are conducted by the director of Sex himself, reportedly Chong's boyfriend, who stages cruel and debasing events for dramatic effect, including Chong slashing her arm to "let the pain out" and a scene featuring her grief-stricken mother, who has just been told by Chong that she's a porn star. The result is a highly disturbing portrait of an emotionally fragile young woman who shrouds her miseries in radical feminist theory, an angle that has proven convenient for the most cruel elements of a business that remains as sleazy as ever. --C.S. O'Brien