Appropriate Behavior

Shirin, a young woman in Brooklyn, tries to balance several identities at once: the daughter her Iranian family expects, a politically aware bisexual, and a modern New Yorker. Each role proves difficult to sustain. Her family does not know she is bisexual, and her ex-girlfriend Maxine cannot understand why she keeps it from them. When her brother's engagement to an Iranian woman is announced, Shirin's response is a private rebellion of sorts, while she also tries to work out what went wrong between her and Maxine.

Appropriate Behavior is a comedy-drama-romance released in 2015 and runs 90 minutes. It is a British production from Parkville Pictures, written and directed by Desiree Akhavan and produced by Cecilia Frugiuele, with Akhavan also playing Shirin. The cast includes Rebecca Henderson as Maxine, Halley Feiffer as Crystal, Ryan Fitzsimmons as Brendan, Anh Duong as Nasrin and Hooman Majd as Merhdad, among 39 credited performers.

The film is the first of two features Akhavan directed, ahead of The Miseducation of Cameron Post in 2018. On TMDB it holds a rating of 6.3 out of 10 from 112 votes, while critics give it 7.2 out of 10 from 61 reviews, so its critical standing sits noticeably higher than its audience score.