Port Authority Review: Is What Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui Should Have Been

By Subhash K Jha

Port Authority

Rating: ***

Danielle Lessovitz’s Port Authority is a very difficult film to categorize. It is small film but not a slight one. It has a slice-of-life intimacy about it. But it doesn’t mind venturing into unexplored territory. It is the story of an out-of-town 20-year guy who unbeknownst to him falls in love with a transgender women.

This is what we saw in Abhishek Kapoor’s Chadigarh Kare Aashiqui two years ago. In Port Authority the subject is dealt with far more rawness and authority. The stakes are a lot higher. And there was a lot more comedy and glamorization in Kapoor’s film.

Lessovitz keeps it dry and raw. The scenario is constantly grim and grimy. The laughs are rare and uncomfortable. Paul(wonderfully portrayed by Fion Whitehead) leaves behind a life of no hope in one town and walks into another town of uncertainty. That sense of non-belonging haunts Paul, and the film.

Who is Pauk? Where does he belong? Clearly his family in Pennsylvania has disowned and the sister who was to take him in New York(Luisa Krause) bluntly tells Paul there is no room for him in her house.Paul hangs around with his trans girlfriend Wye(Leyna Bloom) and her friends. He is neither uncomfortable nor at-home with his life and the choices he makes.

There is a poignant subplot about how Paul sneaks into a vacant apartment and brings his girlfriend “home” pretending he lives in that posh apartment while the real occupants are away. There is a brilliant romcom hidden in that episode.

Clearly director Danielle Lessovitz doesn’t wish to occupy the airy space.There is a darkness at the heart of Port Authority which is impossible to shrug off. It tails the tale like a shadow, haunts down Paul and finally drives him out of his assumed identity in a gender-ambiguous zone .

The film is not without its flaws. Paul clearly loves Wye beyond her gender ambiguity. How is it that he has missed out on her trans-location in the gender map? When he does make the discovery all of a sudden he challenges Wye in one of the most tactless confrontation scenes ever seen.

Apparently some of Leyna Bloom’s own experience as a transgender is used in the film. Port Authority is a queer mixture of social comment and implausible romance. It works because the actors , mostly black, excluding Paul and his mentor in NY(McCaul Lombardi), are invested in the film and its director’s vision.