52 Films by Women Vol 4. 36. PORT AUTHORITY (Director: Danielle Lessovitz)
Why would a young black choreographer-performer rehearsing
with a tight group (her ‘family’) and living in an apartment where she faces
eviction fall for a mysterious, wounded white boy, who pretends to be living
with his half-sister but is actually homeless? It is a question never
satisfactorily resolved in writer-director Danielle Lessovitz’s debut feature, Port
Authority, which like its hero, Wye McQueen (Leyna Bloom) has a ‘lot
going on’ but never quite accounts for all of it in its plotting.
It has a ticking clock. Paul (British actor Fionn Whitehead)
arrives at New York City’s Port Authority bus station hoping that his
half-sister, Sara (Louisa Krause) would be there to greet him. He is left
un-met. Through a window, looking out onto some steps, he briefly sees a group of
dancers in their own world. They are like the sub-culture skateboarders in last
year’s Skate Kitchen. Paul is mesmerised by the confidence they have
in their own self-expression. Inadequate words that might describe them are
‘camp’ and ‘loud’. They are indifferent to the judgment of others. Paul, on the
other hand, is on probation for a crime that isn’t explained. He has come from
the mid-west. In a work by another screenwriter, he would articulate what his
‘problem’ is; why he felt he had to run away. My guess is he wanted to go
somewhere where he didn’t feel a criminal, to connect with a family and a
lifestyle that he never enjoyed. Making the mistake of trying to sleep on a
subway train, he has a violent altercation with two men who steal his baseball cap.
The fight leaves his mobile phone broken. He is saved by Lee (McCaul Lombardi),
who tells him that he’s lucky: he could have been raped. Lee takes Paul to a
homeless shelter, where he is able to queue-jump. Lee sort of expects Paul to
move in with his half-sister at some point, but Sara doesn’t want to know. She feels
put-upon, giving him the ‘I can’t deal with this right now’ speech – well, more
of a gesture. Paul finds himself in un-gainful employment, knocking on the
doors of vulnerable tenants, preceded by a shout, ‘immigration’ and taking
possessions in lieu of rent. He is financially remunerated but it is unclear
how much he earns or where he puts it.
The impending danger you might expect is that the police,
acting on instruction from Paul’s probation officer, would find and arrest
Paul, tracing him through his half-sister. However, this isn’t the issue.
Rather, Paul follows a dancer, Tekay (Devon Carpenter) who sleeps at the hostel
and follows him to Wye’s rehearsal space. Wye’s brother tells that he is not
welcome, that he should leave, that these are not his people, and so on. Wye
follows him out. They go to a diner. Wye subsequently introduces him to her
sub-culture, where individuals compete against each other through poise and
look on a catwalk. There is a prize up for grabs that could really solve Wye’s
rent problem.
In another film, this competition might be the climax, but
not here. Wye creates a look for herself that is ‘Lena Horne from The Wiz’. Did anyone tell her than
Sidney Lumet’s 1978 movie flopped? (Horne played Glinda the Good.) The set
piece serves to show how Paul becomes further enraptured. Having danced a bit
himself – in an early scene, he and Lee take synchronised steps on a dance mat
– Paul wonders what category he could portray. ‘White boy realness,’ is Wye’s
reply.
Wye feels the need to spell out her name for Paul - it’s Wye
as in the river, the fifth longest in England, running 215 km. (This isn’t
mentioned in the film, but just saying.) She is uncomfortable that she has not
met anyone who knows him. He breaks into his sister’s apartment and lets Wye
in. Needless to say, Sara doesn’t show up.
Is this enough? Paul introduces Wye to Lee. However, it is
so obvious that Lee is holding something back that Wye walks out.
Back at the hostel, Tekay is at the centre of an argument.
He falls from the top of a cupboard and is taken to hospital. Paul witnesses
the incident but cannot tell Wye. When Wye and her family go to visit Tekay in
hospital, Paul goes off to buy snacks, including (on request) bottles of
Gatorade.
Of course Paul’s line of work will take him to Wye’s door.
Before then he discovers that Wye is a transgender woman. (Bloom is also
transgender.) Does Wye have male genitalia? Wye is disgusted that Paul would
ask. Nevertheless, they kiss. Paul is in love.
Port Authority has been described as a transgender romance.
Really, it is about the complications of remaking oneself in the city, where a
sense of belonging is self-defined. Its message is subversive: the families you
make are stronger than the ones you are born into. Not that Lessovitz really
stress-tests this idea. It’s just there. At the end of the film, Paul finds
himself back at the bus station, but then is compelled to demonstrate his
‘white boy realness’, walking up and down. Realness is defined not by a sense
of history, a back story, but by presence and what they call in theatre
studies, ‘the gest’.
There is one other issue that isn’t disgusted: the legality
of using homeless people as bailiffs. Is this rooted in reality? If so, what
can be done about it? What happens to the homeless people who were involved in
Tekay’s accident? We don’t find out.
Reviewed at Theatre La
Licorne, Cannes La Bocca, France, Cannes Cinephiles screening, Monday May 20th,
2019, 19:00 hrs
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