Appropriate Behaviour – Movie Review by Frank L.

Directed by Desiree Akhnavan

Writer: Desiree Akhavan (screenplay)
Stars: Desiree Akhavan, Rebecca Henderson, Halley Feiffer

Desiree Akhnavan not only directed but also wrote and plays the central character, Shirin, in this film. Her presence dominates the entire ninety or so minutes of this glimpse of life in Brooklyn for an American-Iranian woman in her mid-twenties. It starts with her breaking up with her girlfriend Maxine whom she had initially met at a New Year’s Eve party while sitting outside, presumably in the cold, on the entrance steps before midnight. The problem between them is Maxine is entirely at one with her sexuality and Shirin is not with hers. Her sophisticated Iranian parents are kept in the dark as to her sexuality even if it is clear as a pike staff that Shirin is not straight, regardless of the occasional fling with a boy. Their relationship is played out in a series of flashbacks which fail to tangle with the main issue. There are some quite amusing set pieces – a lingerie shopping trip, a fling with a handsome enough guy from a hook up web site, a three way with a mildly kinky but sort of straight couple and an attendance at a gay rights discussion group for the purpose of annoying Maxine – which certainly have their comic moments. But there is more or less no substance or purpose to these vignettes. They are not revelatory about Shirin other than perhaps her obsession with herself.

Appropriate Behaviour exudes a sense of being a diary of a twenty something year old girl of Iranian immigrant parents living in Brooklyn whose daily life has its moments but the contents that she has disclosed to the diary gives little clue of who she in essence is. While it certainly explains the Iranian immigrant milieu this is not enough to give an understanding of who Shirin is, in the here and now. There appears to be a hole in the centre.