| Sex: The Annabel Chong Story (Metro, Piccadilly W1) |
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| Culture | |
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23 May 2000
So begins two hours of footage documenting the double life of USC student Grace Quek and her alter ego Annabel Chong. Gough Lewis pieces together a mesmerising film. Continually cutting back to the Gang Bang and its shuffling line of nudes, he cleverly blurs the line between the student and the star. As the number of men increases, you witness her inexorable slide towards a show-down with her unwitting Christian mother, and the fall of the family Quek. Around this central tale Lewis adds in a series of scenes from Quek's troubled past - repressed childhood, gang rape while studying in London, a self-harming illness - with an economy that borders on the flippant. Why does he give so little time to these monumental disasters in her life? Is he so thoughtless that he can't connect these things up with her present dilemma? Then you see that this is exactly what Chong is like. She seems so defensive of what she's doing that she becomes numb to the world. And if the audience feels numb to her too, then that's all part of the trip. You could wonder who she is being defensive towards, as there is a welcome lack of moral tone in Lewis' film. Although he's pretty scathing of the producers who keep all the cash (Chong was never paid for her efforts in the Gang Bang) he makes no judgement on Chong. So why is it so disturbing to watch? This is a film about duplicity. There are two central characters, each inhabiting the same face. There are layers upon layers of denial, within herself, her family, and the society she flees. And there is the staggering tension of watching a woman in such acute sexual pain asking for more. And it is less than titillating. In fact the story of Annabel Chong is hardly about Sex at all. It's a study of the relationship between Society and the human beings that make it up. The single link that Lewis makes clearly is between childhood pressures in Singapore and late-teen overkill in LA. It seems that leaving her "fascist" Junior College to live in the decadent west was a mission for Grace Quek. She is most herself when groaning about the life she led back home, saying ruefully, "Singapore can lick my ass". Filmed talking in front of the beautiful white Anglican Cathedral in the centre of Singapore, she describes how she can't be what a 'good girl' ought to be: "good at school, well behaved, polite, christian, don't smoke or drink, don't wear short skirts, dance or listen to devil's music; and just close yourself up to the world". So how is a chinese girl going to make her parents proud, yet live an honest life? Does she do what family and society tell her? Or go on a self-harming bender? Or split in two and do both? And as Annabel Chong lowers herself down from the altar after 251 men in ten hours, you see her dilemma. It's not about the sex - that's her choice. But to want to be a good girl, to make your parents proud, yet still to live an honest life: it's just too much for one girl. |
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Early
on a sunny LA morning in 1997 aspiring Singaporean porn actress Annabel
Chong arrives on set. Her director gives her a brief moment to ready herself
while he barks instructions through a loud hailer to her co-stars for
the day. At 10am she climbs onto her altar at the centre of an orgiastic
assemblage of tall pillars and spouting fountains: eyes disengaged, mouth
barely summoning a smile. The cameras roll and 251 men form an orderly,
naked line. Two sweating male producers attend, knowing that if you "take
an English accent and an Asian look, and make her the nastiest object
in a Gang Bang" you're on to a winner.
