Desiree Akhavan 2014 USA/UK
Starring: Desiree Akhavan, Halley Feiffer, Rebecca Henderson, Scott Adsit, Anh Duong, Hooman Majd
These days hip, self-examining, independent comedies starring their writer/director are ten-a-penny. Woody Allen has to be mentioned of course but, for the most part, his have been superior efforts made before a glut of imitators appeared on the scene. In the modern day the main offender is Lena Dunham's Girls, the massively popular TV show that replaces self-deprecation with self-annihilation and has both popularised and effectively destroyed the genre in the space of a couple of series'. Desiree Akhavan's Appropriate Behaviour is the latest of these but by far one of the better efforts, placing her characters not deep within the New York hipster scene but simultaneously aspiring to and disliking it while replacing humiliation with quietly sad human weakness. An early scene has Akhavan's Shirin and her best friend in a café, pitching a one-time feast of all the foods they don't usually allow themselves as a solution to the former's heartbreak. When a waiter takes their order however they both go for the healthy and minimal, Shirin choosing a glass of water with lemon and "one of those complimentary mints", as if neither can really manage to keep up the façade of bravado. It's hardly surprising as Shirin never really has much to look forward to. She's stuck on her former girlfriend despite their relationship having been built on shared grumpiness, developed through the realisation that they have similar mindsets when stoned and destroyed through infidelity, irritation and petulance, her position as the token Middle Eastern person on staff at her job has been usurped by an editor whose main appeal appears to be that other workers can gush about how Syrian she is and she can't come out to her family, not because of the usual nervousness but because they are Iranian and, while westernised and otherwise supportive, the homophobia of their native country is so ingrained in her thoughts that she even mentions the history of stoning in an attempt at a throwaway comment as a genuine fear. Her heritage and her exploration of it is actually one of the points that brings a fresh dimension to the narrative. She, like Dunham, has had a privileged, middle class upbringing and her wish to study art and filmmaking and her somewhat lazy lifestyle indulged but she may lose it all, as well as her family, due to something she can't control and, for the sake of her mental health, shouldn't repress. Despite all this the film is often very funny, the angry opening scene when the aforementioned ex, Maxine, insists Shirin take a gift she once gave her on departing only for it to be revealed as a slightly intimidating strap-on when Shirin throws it into a trash can on the sidewalk then retrieves it apprehensively stands out. Another has an encounter with a unflappable lingerie saleswoman who is soon turned into a willing therapist, a melancholy tinge being added in the woman's combination of feminist encouragement and advanced retail techniques. As warm as these moments are though proceedings are derailed by an issue unfortunately reminiscent of other entries in the field, namely that practically all of the characters are at best annoying, unpleasant and almost wholly unlikeable. The only exception is Halley Feiffer's sparky Crystal and she's only on screen for a total of about 10 minutes. 30 Rock's Scott Adsit pops up a couple of times as a friendly but entirely useless perma-stoned boss whose parenting style pisses all over neglect laws and worse still Shirin's attitude towards him seems to allow his behaviour because he's successful elsewhere in his life. The jumps between flashbacks and the present (often with months between them) meanwhile are clunky and make it hard to follow the story or even work out which timespace events are happening in. In spite of such problems though the ending is fantastic, utterly devastating and beautifully acted with a uncommon and unexpected twist that feels organic rather than simply added on and has more to say about race and sexuality than anything that precedes it. Akhavan's visual style has also been done before, and far better at that, and she could do with more experience and possibly a talented editor but it's hard not to admire her mildly inappropriate dialogue and the clever developments she brings to the party.
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