Appropriate Behavior

Appropriate Behavior

“Can you tell I’m dead inside just by looking at me?” asks Shirin. Shirin is an Iranian-American bisexual living in Brooklyn who recently ended her relationship with her girlfriend, Maxine. A lot of promise is shown in “Appropriate Behavior,” a debut film from Desiree Akhavan (the writer/director/star) that never gets too far away from its deadpan tone. It seems like there’s nowhere new to go with movies about 20-somethings wandering through Brooklyn, going to parties, having relationships, and then talking about it over lattes; but “Appropriate Behavior” still feels fresh.

And so while we have all seen movies about deadpan Brooklyn hipsters, we haven’t quite seen this one yet. The clichéd setting and characters (aimless hopeful artists, cool parties, flat-affect wit) are used by Akhavan as a platform for some voices and energies too frequently left out of such stories. There’s something happening here that hasn’t happened before not very often at least and it makes her a filmmaker (and actress) worth watching.

Shirin comes from Iranian immigrant parents; she has not come out to them yet which becomes a major point of contention between her and Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), although Shirin scolds Maxine for not understanding: “I come from Iran, Maxine. You know, where they stone gay people?” Shirin’s parents (Anh Duong and Hooman Majd) are highly accomplished individuals as is her judgmental brother Ali (Arian Moayed), who is engaged to marry a plastic surgeon himself being a urologist.

They still ask their daughter hopefully if she has met any nice boys; they take it on face value when she tells them she only dates girls now but doesn’t think much else about what that might mean besides friendship. Her parents assume that Shirin and Maxine are just friends sharing an apartment together (one with only one bed).

Shirin loves her family but sometimes their loving concern feels like pressure. She sees herself as a disappointment to them, she rarely leaves the borough, she has a Masters in Journalism but doesn’t use it; instead, she teaches a filmmaking class to rowdy 5-year olds at an aggressive Park Slope school and lives behind a sheet in a sprawling Bushwick apartment/artist-space with two roommates who can be slightly scary.

Her relationship with Maxine (told through flashbacks) was all consuming; Shirin has romanticized it in memory, telling a friend: “We were an It Couple.” Maxine is self-righteous and judgmental, draped in identity politics; when they first meet each other at a New Year’s Eve party where Shirin is drunk wearing a tiara, looking at Maxine’s rather severe outfit she says “I love dykes.” Maxine informs her that word offends people which baffles Shirin who meant it as compliment.

In the end what we see is that Shirin doesn’t fit anywhere. She’s bisexual, which means she’s something of an object of suspicion to more strictly lesbian women. “This is just phase for you,” sneers Maxine at one point. With her parents, she puts on the face of the good Persian daughter and cuts out everything else about herself in order to get along; at loud Nowruz party full of Persians from all walks of life where there’s much gossiping and commiserating among old friends from the neighborhood, none of whom seem remotely interested in talking or listening to anything beyond the surface level especially someone like Shirin who comes across as neither fully this nor that.

One of the flaws in the movie is that it never becomes clear why the main character likes Maxine, and this may be attributed to its deadpan style. Yet when genuine emotions come up, they are expressed in a toneless way which leaves no room for further development. You have deadpanned yourself into a corner. In other movies about lost love such as “Annie Hall,” everything that has happened during the relationship seems magical because people remember things with longing after they’ve ended; but here Shirin’s relationship with Maxine starts off on bad footing, so there is no warmth or feeling coming through even when she says she’s “dead inside.”

Maybe at some level all of “Appropriate Behavior” is about this. At different times and in various places what counts as behaving appropriately changes for Shirin. Her parents have expectations for her they’re loving parents but she dreads their reaction if they ever find out she’s attracted to women. Maxine wants her to act more like other gays do or what lesbians should be doing according to their scene; so it annoys Maxine when one night at Pride Week Shirin makes friends with a drag queen instead of going home with someone else who’d been eyeballing them both evening long.

She thinks Shirley doesn’t know enough about being gay yet that Shirley’s just playing around being curious-but ultimately straight girl who’ll go back where she came from once things get too hard here but really never left anywhere except herself because wherever there was it wasn’t home anyhow.

Being tourist everywhere makes her self-consciousness heavy brick wall old British lady wearing hat indoors chipping away at her every word while waiting for elevator doors close finally allowing silence between strangers like ship captain seeing iceberg approach too late but still having time enough turn himself into fiction turned book writer years later explaining why lifeboat could not save everyone aboard.

Titanic past decade fancying himself prophet only understood by few scattered souls over globe during brief windows total solar eclipse happened when no one else was looking up at sky just then because they were too busy staring downward trying make sense out nothingness surrounding them since birth until now where did we come from what are doing here how long does it last will there be snacks provided waiting for god who never arrives always seems like such waste but least keeps hope alive suppose or something along those lines anyway

As a writer, Akhavan has fun with some Brooklyn types and one or two devastating lines. Shirin meets up with a guy from OK Cupid who tells her his art “defies labels,” that he wants to use his stand-up comedy “to bring attention to social justice issues.” She has an interaction with a lingerie saleswoman who seems to see her job as contributing toward the self-esteem of women.

The saleswoman says to Shirin, “Just because your breasts are small doesn’t mean they’re not legitimate. It’s okay to be angry.” Shirin was just looking for underwear, not a therapeutic pep-talk. Akhavan is ultimately loopy in spirit about lampooning things and at one point even she can’t help but note the deadpan tone of her own film when Shirin lambasts one of her dates, “What’s up with your passive disinterest in everything? What happened at Wesleyan that did this to you?”

Akhavan recognizes that the deadpan is limiting, it has limited Shirin, not only in relation to herself but also to life, family, friends, girlfriends and boyfriends Iranian-ness American-ness etc., all that stuff she’s got to integrate; she’s got to find a way to live a whole life uncompartmentalized and free. The children of immigrants know very well what it feels like to have a foot in two worlds.

As director Akhavan steers confidently; it’s not flashily filmed there’s nothing trying hard here distracting from the story itself; there’s so much here lots of information has gotta get across (and does) but what really carries Appropriate Behavior is that you can tell, every scene you can sense here comes another thing: Akhavan really has something to say. This story came from her; it could only come from her.

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