Modern Whore Is a Modern Documentary: Modern Whore Film Review
Andrea Werhun in a still from Modern Whore.
Smartly composed, tongue-in-cheek, yet ultimately completely serious; Modern Whore is a modern documentary.
In 2018, Toronto-based writer, student, and sex worker Andrea Werhun put pen to paper and wrote her defining memoir (also called Modern Whore). After serving as a creative consultant on the Oscar-winning Sean Baker film Anora (2024), Baker agreed to executive produce a film adaptation of Werhun's memoir.
Nicole Bazuin, who worked as the photographer for Modern Whore the memoir, came aboard as the director of what would become this documentary-meets-feature film.
There is a sense of comfort in this project, an element one imagines is necessary for a documentary covering a subject as serious as this (despite the personality in the way it's written) if it wants to be successful. It is. Werhun and Bazuin's familiarity lends itself to many satisfying visual flourishes, bordering on magical realism.
It's worth noting that Werhun isn't just talented at embodying and bringing to life what she put to paper approximately six years prior, she's got the campy acting chops to do it justice the way an actor with a long professional resume might. Simply put: She has star power. The campiness is a license to 1. Talk about and depict serious subjects, 2. Be extremely stylized when deemed necessary (or it's fun enough it's worth doing anyway), and 3. Make the audience expect a bit of humour to make the so-called medicine go down.
Additionally, Bazuin and co. know when to wind things down. There is no need to hit the perfunctory hour and a half mark. Modern Whore is one hour and nineteen minutes and that is probably how long it should be. It is just one more piece of evidence that proves Bazuin and Werhun know what they want to say, how to say it, and what the audience themselves probably want, even if the latter can't quite articulate it.
Yes, Modern Whore is a fantastic look at a moment in time (late 2010s), an under-investigated from-the-inside industry, and biography of a portion of Werhun's life, but it serves as something more: An immensely helpful springboard for whatever the pair — separately or together — do next. It's plausible Werhun becomes a star, if that's something she's interested in. It's clear Bazuin has worked out a style of filmmaking that acknowledges depth can go with flash.
Modern Whore is a modern documentary, with the potential to become not just a documentary classic but a project we collectively look back on as the beginning (or at least a new beginning) of multiple great careers in filmmaking and storytelling.