„Appropriate behavior“ is a foreign concept for Shirin. The Iranian-American New Yorker is both quick-witted and totally unbalanced: a dangerous combination only reinforced by the break-up with her girlfriend Maxine. “We were an 'it couple,' when we’d go to parties, and there was dancing we’d start dancing and everyone would make a circle around us and watch us dance” she tells her best friend. Her friend, in turn, looks skeptical.

Prior to her debut, director, writer, and protagonist Desiree Akhavan created the award-winning comedy web series THE SLOPE starring the nightmarish lesbian hipster couple Ingrid and Desire and revolving around them hanging around Brooklyn as they spouted acerbic, snarky dialogue. APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR also has an episodic structure and indulges in puns and one-liners. While deep in her break-up blues, Desiree is forced to deal with her life’s perennial weak spots: the family that is not supposed to know about her bisexuality, encounters with her ex, an emotionally ambivalent and sexually diverse collection of dates, and a quasi-job that is supposed to motivate a group of hyperactive five year olds to take up filmmaking. All this is not only amusing but sincere and, at times, very moving. Akhavan has been compared to Lena Dunham and Woody Allen and been hailed as the next comedic breakthrough in the US and England. APPROPRIATE BEHAVIOR also reminded me of Alison Bechdel’s comic “Dykes to Watch Out For.”

Toni Ohms (INDIEKINO MAGAZIN)

Translation: Elinor Lewy