Baba Azmi’s Safia/Safdar was airdropped on Zee5 this month, no one knew about it. The best-kept secret on a streaming platform is out. And you would be unfortunate to miss it. Safia/Safdar is not a cinematic monument. But it touches your heart with its simplicity, purity, and old-world charm.
Azmi and his writer Mir Ali Hussain take us straightaway into a humble Muslim home whose patriarch, Salman(Kanwaljeet Singh), is kindly progressive, humane, and dignified: in other words, an extension of the father played so memorably by Danish Hussain in Baba Azmi’s earlier directorial Mee Raqsam.
Salman’s younger daughter, Safia, is compelled to take over her father’s haircutting business after the patriarch suffers a health setback. This gender crossover is treated not as some socio-cultural event but as an occasion for a mild rebuke aimed at societal prejudices.
The most interesting aspect of this lovely little film is the underage heroine taking over a man’s profession in a small conservative town. The talented Aditi Subedi plays Safia and her gender-crossed imaginary cousin, Safdar, with disarming grace. She is lovely in the most natural way possible.
While Mir Ali Hussain’s writing is commendable for its quaint, innocuous look at prejudices and gender biases, its exploration of the world of young rappers is hurried and inconclusive. Safia’s inclusion into the rappers’ universe seems more a plotting convenience than a depiction of the harsh reality that lower middle families, with their mounting debt and dwindling dignity, have to face regardless of their religious belief.
Baba Azmi’s quaint world of diffused middle-class tensions is pleasing and welcome. The performances are uniformly convincing, except for Naseeruddin Shah playing a henna-bearded, smarmy loan shark. Lately, Mr. Shah’s performances have become smug and all-knowing. He misses what the characters in Safia/Safdar require the most: vulnerability.
