TIFF25 REVIEW: Modern Whore [20XX]

Rating: NR | Runtime: 80 minutes
Studio: Crave / Quiver Distribution
Director(s): Nicole Bazuin
Writer(s): Nicole Bazuin & Andrea Werhun / Andrea Werhun & Nicole Bazuin (book Modern Whore: A Memoir)

I quickly learned the power of a little unzipping.

Being a published author, performer, and activist all while still being a sex worker, there’s truly no better person to tell Andrea Werhun’s story than herself. She’s done so with her collection of short stories entitled Modern Whore: A Memoir (accompanied with photographs by Nicole Bazuin). She’s done it through short films directed by Bazuin using a hybrid style wherein Werhun re-enacts her own experiences. And now the pair collaborate again on a feature adaptation to shed more light on a subject that’s remained stigmatized and criminalized despite a gradual social shift bolstered by the current normalization of OnlyFans.

It’s an entertaining piece thanks to Bazuin and Werhun’s comic sensibilities to subvert dark subject matter with intentionally goofy and/or campy sequences satirizing public perception through a historical cinematic lens, but it’s also a crucial work insofar as embracing the vulnerability necessary to humanize laborers within a profession that’s been victimized and villainized for millennia. You won’t be surprised to learn one of the ways to do so is by using parallels with and terms from “respectable” careers. Vixen Vu says it best when declaring her wish is for sex work to be spoken in the same breath as chiropractic care. “Not everyone believes in it, but the people who love it … love it.”

Vu, SJ Raphael, Kitoko Mai, and Robin Banks are all current or former sex workers Werhun met in the industry and their insight proves invaluable to expand upon the vignettes she recreates from her life. There’s talk about being gender neutral and choosing to lean feminine because it pays more. There’s the double-standards faced by Black women in the industry. This cohort is also just beneficial insofar as offering different perspectives on key universal concepts such as shame. Because Werhun is the first to admit that being a white, cisgenger, and conventionally feminine woman skews things and she isn’t afraid to bring other voices in for a more robust education.

This is still her story, though. Werhun takes us from having the initial idea to start escorting while at university to making a career of it to pivoting into stripping—all while continuing to hone her art in the hopes of one day being able to sustain herself on it alone. We hear the horror stories, learn the terminology (i.e. “trauma porn”), and watch it all through a Technicolor filter allowing Werhun to embody every stereotype she can conjure as a means to disarm the viewers’ preconceptions and let the wisdom and context being taught in. Because there’s nothing more effective than interrupting a LOL with a record scratch of reality.

The trigger warning that plays beforehand isn’t therefore to be taken lightly. Not by prudes since the film definitely isn’t shy about nudity, but, more importantly, not by sexual assault victims considering the abuse that’s restaged. Yes, Werhun and Bazuin want Modern Whore to be a good time, but they won’t sacrifice emotional authenticity to do so. The over-the-top theatricality with costuming, aesthetic genre homages, and caricatured “Johns” is merely a tool. It’s the shiny packaging that gets us to buy into the salaciousness we bring to the subject before stripping it away to see the women fighting to survive a dangerous occupation and the warped public perception making it so.

Hence the support system—not only from her four contemporaries, but also Werhun’s boyfriend, her favorite stripping client, and her very Catholic mother. The two men provide a nice contrast to the revolving door of creeps and sadists populating her tales (not that there aren’t a few sweethearts sprinkled in too) because it means something to let morality and logic into a subject too often buried beneath shame and righteous indignation. It helps us remember that the taboo surrounding sex work is driven by outsider jealousy, misogyny, self-hate, and fear. Because villainizing and victimizing sex workers is always an excuse to justify being the villain who victimizes them.

It’s why the whole film ultimately moves towards a need to create a new label born from the fact that telling your own story means you can finally be painted as the hero. That doesn’t mean there isn’t still risk involved (outing oneself as a sex worker can provide evidence of “objectionable behavior” to be used against you by landlords, employers, and courts). Just that there’s an alternative side to the one we’ve been indoctrinated into believing is an objective truth. Look no further than the inclusion of Werhun’s mom. She doesn’t approve of what her daughter does and fears for her safety every day, but she’s also extremely proud of her bravery to unabashedly be the woman she wants to be.