Director: Desiree Akhavan | USA | Fiction | 2014 | 90 mins
Film source: The Film Collaborative
Sponsor: Prime Lending
“Inappropriate Behavior” might have been a more accurate title for writer-director Desiree Akhavan’s comedic romp about the misadventures of Shirin, a bisexual Iranian-American twenty-something (played by Akhavan), who manages to bungle nearly every social situation she encounters. Akhavan, who will have a regular role on the next season of Girls, has clearly taken a page from Lena Dunham’s HBO series about college grads floundering in the trendy world of Brooklyn. But Appropriate Behavior is also strongly autobiographical (like her character, she’s bisexual and of Iranian descent), and the film’s distinctive appeal lies in its offbeat presentation of the rift between the traditional Persian values of Shirin’s parents—who either don’t know or choose to ignore that she’s bisexual—and the freewheeling hipster culture of Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood. With a confidence behind the camera which belies the utter ineptness of her onscreen persona, Appropriate Behavior is at turns a painfully awkward and wickedly funny feature debut from an up-and-coming young filmmaker.