Cannes Review: ‘Port Authority’ embraces diverse storytelling but is a reminder there’s a long way to go in terms who gets to tell them

I grew up slightly outside the New York City ball and vogue scene with the likes of legends like Kevin Aviance, Leiomy, Pony Blanik, and Kassandra Ebony. Imagine my excitement when I heard director Danielle Lessovitz new movie Port Authority was competing in Uncertain Regard at Cannes.

In the wake of popular shows like Pose, (a show that chronicles the New York City Ball scene in the 1980s), now, the time is ripe for stories like Port Authority, but the marketing is deceptive and more of a ploy to get butts in seats. This film is less a focus on ballroom or Trans culture and more about a straight, white, male, interloper who navigates a space he’s unfamiliar with. Boring. Now, the individuals he interacts with are real, and engaging—outside of that, the film feels 100% false.

Paul (Fionn Whitehead), is a wayward young man who arrives at New York City’s Port Authority bus terminal looking to start a new life with his half-sister. When his sister is nowhere to be found, he wanders onto the street and finds a group of people voguing outside of the station. Paul catches the eye of Wye (Leyna Bloom) and smiles but doesn’t approach her. On the subway, he is physically assaulted and then saved by Lee (McCaul Lombardi) who takes Paul to a shelter where he can sleep each night.

While wandering the shelter, Paul sees Tekay (Devon Carpenter) escaping from the building and follows him to a place where he sees Wye again, and it doesn’t occur to to him what he’s walked into. He is confronted by members of the house of McQueen (which Wye is apart of) for being a spectator and is forced to leave. Wye follows him out to introduce herself, this encounter begins their Romeo and Juliet romance. After several meetings, Paul is shocked to learn Wye is a trans woman. Wye reminds that he should know that by reading the world he’s just entered.

Their relationship experiences ups and downs until Wye discovers that Paul is a habitual liar, and does nothing to redeem himself. In the end, he is rewarded with acceptance from said group for not even doing the bare minimum for this community because the script says so.

The ballroom community has been a topic of interest for some time. Paris is Burning, directed by Jennie Livingston, is the mainstay in queer, Black cinema. It’s a film meant for people of that world, and people who want to learn more. With Port Authority, it’s hard to gauge the target audience. This isn’t a drama that’s focused on a trans woman and her lover. This is about the exploration of the queer world through the eyes of a charmless and clueless, straight white man that is meant to educate people like him in some way—while simultaneously alienating the demographic it thinks it’s targeting.

House of McQueen and trans actress Leyna Bloom are the positive elements of this film. Seeing the group dancing, bonding, and showing love for one another endear the McQueen members to the audience. Wye is a smart, confident woman in charge of her destiny. She navigates the world with hyper-vigilance as most trans women have to do. It’s unfortunate, but it adds maturity, and awareness to catch when something is amiss.

Port Authority features a well-done love scene between the couple that is handled with tenderness. In general, good love scenes are challenging to construct, but here it’s well framed and avoids the usual awkwardness that comes with filming one. Neither actor appears uncomfortable with the circumstances which put the audience at ease while watching.  

Wye tells Paul, “ I think about all the space the world doesn’t give me.” The placement and timing of this line is strange being as though Paul is taking up her space. The Black, queer community faces adversity at every turn due to the intersections they exist at no matter how hard they work. Paul, on the other hand, is experiencing distress by his design, which makes it seem like Wye and her house family are plot devices for Paul’s personal growth. The whole cinematic experience is cheap and based in fallacious fantasy.

In a time where moviegoers are longing for and embracing diverse storytelling, movies like Port Authority are a reminder there is still a long way to go in terms of who is telling these stories, how these types of stories are told, and identifying the right audience for things like this. It does a great disservice to marginalized communities when they can’t exist outside of the protagonists intensions. Please stop making movies like this.