Nicole Bazuin’s short Modern Whore feels like a documentary sister to Cam: it’s just as stylised, intelligent, and positive about sex work. This is part of our coverage of the Fantasia Festival.
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One of our favourites of Fantasia 2018 was Daniel Goldhaber and Isa Mazzei’s Cam, a fun and thrilling horror film that empowers sex workers. The film has since been distributed by Netflix and it featured in our ebook, Beyond empowertainment: Feminist horror and the struggle for female agency. Nicole Bazuin’s short film Modern Whore feels like a documentary sister to Cam: it’s just as stylised, intelligent, and positive about sex work.
The film’s subject is former escort Andrea Werhurn, who joyfully reflects on the highs of her job while detailing the ways in which men often made her work unsafe. The film is entirely built around her own words: her talking head interview is cut together with campy, neon-soaked reconstructions of the encounters she describes with her clients. For the most part, the film is entertaining and upbeat, as Andrea reminisces about the fun side of her job — something that so often isn’t talked about when it comes to sex work. To her, being an escort is akin to being a performer who entertains their audience, like an actor or musician: in one restaged memory, a client gazes at her in awe mid-coitus and exclaims, “Wow, you look like a movie star!” (For another take on sex work and performance, check out Anne Émond’s Nelly.)
Andrea also details the dark side of sex work, when men don’t respect an escort’s professional boundaries, but like Cam, the villain in Modern Whore is these men and not sex work itself. Andrea describes the demeaning nature of ‘hobbyists’, aka men who review escorts and judge their bodies on online websites. While Andrea, at first, laughs off these men’s behaviour as petty, she later uncovers the insidious power dynamic these websites create. “When an escort and a client have differing perspectives on an appointment, there are consequences that go beyond bad reviews,” she explains, detailing an encounter when a client threatened to cross a line of consent.
While the #MeToo movement has increased advocacy to create safe workplaces for women in many professions, there has been little of the same widespread support for sex workers. As Modern Whore reveals, even though an escort’s work is inherently sexual, they still have professional boundaries that need to be respected in order for their work to be safe. As a political film, Modern Whore is just as vital viewing as Kitty Green’s stunning drama about workplace harassment and assault in the film sector, The Assistant — although Modern Whore will leave you feeling decidedly more upbeat.
Fantasia Fest continues in Canada until September 3. Click here for tickets.
