Appropriate Behavior

Appropriate Behavior is a 2014 American comedy film written and directed by Desiree Akhavan, who also stars as Shirin, a bisexual Iranian-American woman in Brooklyn trying to reconcile her family's expectations, her sexuality, and the breakup with her girlfriend Maxine. The film premiered in the Next section at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival and was released theatrically in the United States by Gravitas Ventures on January 16, 2015.^{1 • 2 • 3}

Themes

The film's central subject is identity under multiple, conflicting codes of conduct. Akhavan explained the title by saying that the character belongs to several niches, each with different rules of appropriate behavior, while her natural impulses are, across the board, inappropriate.⁴

The press notes describe the film as introducing a gray area to the coming-out narrative: in an Iranian-American family, sharing information about one's sexuality is not always the right approach to liberation.² In her director's statement, Akhavan wrote that she wanted to avoid the classic coming-out cliches, including a breakthrough hugging-through-our-tears scene and clear-cut definitions of good and bad, and to write sex scenes honest to dating as she knew it.² In a 2015 interview she noted that bisexual people are underrepresented onscreen, even more so than lesbians, and that she could tell stories no one had told before about being bisexual, being Iranian, and having her sense of humor.⁵

Production

The film began as Akhavan's thesis film. Its creative team formed when she studied abroad in London and met Cecilia Frugiuele, who became her producer at Parkville Pictures; Frugiuele completed a producing degree at Westminster while Akhavan pursued a graduate directing degree at NYU, and Frugiuele saw every student short Akhavan made during that period.⁶ The film received a Frameline Completion Fund grant.⁷

Before the feature, Akhavan had screenwriting experience from the web series The Slope, a comedy about superficial, homophobic lesbians that won her a following.⁵ She has said the first draft of the film was sillier and more flat-out comedy, and that her producer pushed her to add the family material, the jobs, and the story of someone trying to find their identity.⁸

Relationship to Akhavan's life

Akhavan has repeatedly stressed that the film is not autobiographical and that the exact events did not take place, while the emotions are true to life.² It is partly inspired by her breakup with Ingrid Jungermann, whom she met while studying film as a postgraduate at NYU, and by the period after she came out to her parents, who did not talk to her for a long time afterward.⁹ She made The Slope with Jungermann during that period of near estrangement, and the film goes further, with relatively more explicit sex and greater emphasis on the emotional bond between Shirin and her ex-girlfriend.⁹

In her director's statement she wrote that she chose to star in the film because it would have been disingenuous to hire a better-looking version of herself, and that the film's structure, which moves back and forth between past and present, was influenced by Annie Hall.²

Reception

On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 97% Tomatometer based on 63 reviews, with an audience Popcornmeter score of 64% from more than 1,000 ratings. The site's critics consensus calls it warm, funny, and quietly profound, and a thoroughly compelling calling card for its writer, director, and star.³ The BFI called the film among the most hilarious comedies of the last few years, describing it as a clever and incisive story about a bisexual Iranian-American woman in her twenties finding her way through romantic entanglements in Brooklyn, and observed that although it occupies the same territory as Woody Allen's films and Lena Dunham's work, Akhavan speaks with a voice that is entirely her own.⁴ Some critics were less taken with the final act: a Reel Talk Online review graded the film B- and argued that its themes fall away by the third act, which becomes a typical hipster comedy with an anticlimactic ending.³

The film was nominated for the Gotham Audience Award and an Independent Spirit Award.¹

References

1. Appropriate Behavior, The Film Collaborative
2. Appropriate Behavior press kit notes, The Film Collaborative
3. Appropriate Behavior, Rotten Tomatoes
4. Bisexual healing: Desiree Akhavan on Appropriate Behaviour, BFI, 4 March 2015
5. Interview with Desiree Akhavan about Appropriate Behaviour, Eye For Film, 24 June 2015
6. Movies That Changed My Life: 'Appropriate Behavior' Director Desiree Akhavan, The Playlist, 20 January 2015
7. Appropriate Behavior, Frameline38
8. An Interview with Desiree Akhavan, Who Is Not the Next Lena Dunham, Jezebel
9. Desiree Akhavan on Appropriate Behaviour and not being the 'Iranian bisexual Lena Dunham', The Guardian, 5 March 2015

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2013 to 2014 › Titles symbols to I

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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