Adnan Sarwar’s Motorcycle Girl is … unusual. Barely a biopic, hardly an adventure, never a romantic fable, nor a road-trip movie. It is, in essence, a daughter’s journey to connect with her dead father and, by the slightest of margins, a women’s lib film — though without the NGO-minded, propagandist bawls (yes, Verna and Josh — I’m talking about you).

Somewhat rocky in its first-half, the film has some growing up to do. Sarwar, on the other hand, is already on a fantastic growth spurt as a wunderkind director. Leaps and bounds better than Shah, Sarwar’s Motorcycle Girl is an unfussy adaptation of Zenith Irfan’s life.

Irfan, if you didn’t know, is the first female solo motorcyclist in Pakistan to ride from Lahore to Khunjerab Pass. She was 21 at the time.

Motorcycle Girl is constrained by its budget but is surprisingly engaging

Sohai Ali Abro, in what is her breakthrough role as a “serious” film actress, looks 28-years-old easily.

For Abro’s version of Irfan, a typical middle-class educated woman, every morning is a struggle. She gets up a few minutes late, gulps down breakfast while talking to her mother with her mouth full (the mother is Samina Pirzada, docile and nearly oblivious), and then rushes to the street where her driver deliberately leaves her behind, smirking to himself at his little victory. Like the driver (who is also a bit lewd), most of the men in Zenith’s life are chauvinist brutes.

Her boss, the owner of a creative ad agency, is a stuck-up sexist (Sarmad Khoosat with nostrils and jaws perpetually contracted as if he passed a boiling gutter). Her office crush (Danyal Raheel), a suave-looking go-getter, doesn’t shy away from taking over Zenith’s creative ideas or laughing at her expense. Even her would-be fiancé (Ali Kazmi, excelling in his brief role), an investment banker from New York, suffers from the typical Alpha Male syndrome, forbidding her to work after marriage.

With the exception of her brother (played by Hadi Arshad) and two total strangers (Sarwar in a brief cameo and Wajahat Malik), the men Zenith meets are deliberately designed to give mankind a bad name.

The screenplay, jaggedly structured at times, has a laidback, derivative attitude. By design or fluke, this normalcy tones down the loudness of the women’s lib message.

Sarwar wisely focuses on Zenith’s daily, non-world-ending battles. Her challenges are mostly trifling; nothing a slightly braver woman can’t handle. When she does learn to ride the motorcycle, it is simply an alternative to taking the transport van to work. Despite what people may assume, the motorcycle isn’t represented as a symbol of defiance; it is rather a tangible McGuffin (a plot device) that supplements Zenith’s story.

The real Zenith Irfan emphasises that her journey to the Pak-China border at Khunjerab Pass was a means to connect to her dad. That message, instrumental to the story’s angle Sarwar builds up, comes off as an after-thought.

Abro, however, smack in the spotlight, milks the role for all it’s worth, using the story’s human elements to kill her previous second-billing — the bimbo image from Jawani Phir Nahi Aani and Wrong No.

Motorcycle Girl is a small story, and its shortcomings are a result of its low budget (the flat, shadow-less lighting saves production time, as do the limited indoor locations). Aside from these constraints, it is a surprisingly engaging motion picture.

Published in Dawn, ICON, April 29th, 2018