Cannes Film Review: ‘Port Authority’

Selling realness.

That’s the essence of Harlem’s tight-knit drag ball scene, where dazzling kiki competitions — made popular in 1991’s landmark Lgbt documentary “Paris Is Burning,” and still raging strong all these years later via “RuPaul’s Drag Race” and Ryan Murphy’s “Pose” on TV — celebrate the art of passing as something other than whatever labels society has given you: man as woman, gay as straight, street kid as supermodel.

Writer-director Danielle Lessowitz’s likable debut feature, “Port Authority,” arrives decades late to the party, spinning a simple but effective romance in which that same goal of self-transformation is what separates two star-crossed lovers whose worlds collide on the steps of New York’s busiest bus terminal.Wye, pronounced like the letter Y, is just being herself, cheering on the queer kids as they practice voguing on the Port Authority steps.

But as far as straight-identifying Paul (“Dunkirk” discovery Fionn Whitehead) is concerned,

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