Before catching writer/director/star Desiree Akhavan’s Appropriate Behavior at Brooklyn's BAMcinemaFest last summer, I was admittedly already a huge fan. A close follower of her old web series The Slope, I kept tabs on the film’s debut at last year's Sundance Film Festival, where it absolutely slayed.
Once the reviews started rolling in, critics were unanimously praising the New York native as a fresh voice in the film industry, and fittingly so. Appropriate Behavior, which opens in limited release today, is a hilarious, bold, and unflinching look into the life of a Persian-American bisexual Brooklynite named Shireen (Akhavan) trying to be all things to all the people she cares about: her parents, her employers, and especially her ex-girlfriend, Maxine (Rebecca Henderson).
Here, Akhavan discusses Appropriate Behavior's inspiration, her ongoing search for identity, and what’s up next in her promising career.
What was the inspiration behind the title?
I actually stole it from my first script, which was called Inappropriate Behavior. My producer [Cecilia Frugiuele] and I were always thinking this film should be called Appropriate Behavior, because it was so perfect, but I didn't want to sacrifice the title I had for the other script. Finally, when we went into production, we were like, "Fuck it." It always made sense to call it this because that’s who this character was to us. We saw it as someone who could never be appropriate despite herself. Every situation she was in, there would be guidelines, but she would always take the worst possible route.
I know this film isn’t trying to be particularly representative of a people or a culture, but I did appreciate your depiction of the duality immigrant kids deal with.
Yeah! Something that always came up between myself and other children of immigrants that I hadn’t really seen depicted was that duality. You’re one way in front of your friends, you’re one way in a professional context, and you’re another in your family. That’s another aspect of this that I feel the title touches on. There’s an appropriate way to be someone’s daughter or to be Iranian, versus the appropriate way to be American or young in New York right now. There’s a certain protocol.
It was important to me to have a character who was straddling two different worlds, who didn’t have a home. First of all, that’s something I struggle with all the time. I never quite felt at home. What’s interesting, too, is that the LGBT community also has its own set of appropriate behaviors. You’re supposed to talk a certain way or dress a certain way to be considered a part of that very community. And that’s all these things are. They’re communities of people, and when you fail to perfectly fit into one of them, you’re neither fish nor fowl and you have nowhere to be. You kind of make it up as you go.
Is this film a way of creating your own space?
Filmmaking is part of my identity and the only identity I feel at home in. Being a storyteller is where I feel most comfortable, but in all other aspects of life I’m incredibly uncomfortable. [Laughs] I’m kinda looking for a rulebook.
I was really fascinated by the way you explore relationships in this film. You have this couple who are so incompatible yet desperately holding onto each other.
I thought Shireen and Maxine had incredible romantic chemistry and lust and admiration. Even though they were incompatible, they had respect for the other person. They were also highly attracted to the opposite, and there’s something really hot about someone who doesn’t get you at all and someone you wouldn’t necessarily choose to be friends with but you definitely can’t help but be lovers with. [Laughs.]
Can you talk about the way you use sex to show shifts in their relationship?
The films I love use sex to communicate something honest about characters that you can't possibly communicate in any other dialogue scene, and that’s why it was important to me. Sex scenes become totally gratuitous when it doesn’t teach you something about relationships and the people in it, so I tried really hard to make sure the audience was always learning and unfolding different layers of this couple’s dynamic.
When I saw this at BAMcinemaFest, your parents were in the audience. How’d they react to the film?
I don't ask, actually. [Laughs.] They’re just really proud. I definitely felt guilty because they had already seen it at Sundance, so my dad shouldn't have had to see it twice. My mom loves it. A lot of it makes her laugh. They're just tickled that people are watching something I made and that overcompensates for how sensitive the subject matter is. They're not focusing so much on the taboo subject matter; they’re looking at their kid having success in this country.
1.
What do you think it is about New York or Brooklyn that makes people move so fast in their relationships?
People who come to New York in general are usually incredibly ambitious. They're people who want to be at the top of their field, and for that reason that can also be really isolating. That's why the relationships people get in become so quickly intimate and so close. Because, A) people can’t afford to live on their own and, B) there’s no space. You're literally on top of everyone. Because of that isolation, when you find another person here who shares that same kind of drive with you, you grab on tight.
However, that makes the parting of ways so crippling, because that person becomes part of your identity. I've seen a lot of new relationships pop up in the past year and I’ve noticed they’ve become extensions of each other so quickly. There's no room. Maybe it's my age, maybe it’s being at the cusp of my 30s, but everybody I know is getting married. So much of their identity is chasing the dream of their careers but also immediately setting up that family because how much time do we have?
How has your perspective changed on life since writing Shireen back then?
I didn't feel the pressure of time in the way I do now. I wrote this script three years ago, and my 30s are at the forefront of my mind, so I don't know yet. I heard you don’t accept your 30s until you’re around 33, so I’m still waiting for that "whoa" moment. But back then I was definitely more reckless. I had a choose-your-own-adventure spirit and I thought any opportunity was worth it, so I'd put myself in really awful situations impulsively. I don't do that anymore, and writing this script was me making fun of that and having an exaggerated perspective on what it is to live life that way.
Does the idea of growing older excite you?
Yeah, it excites me. I never felt young. I never identified with people my own age. I always dated people eight or nine years older than me. I've never actually been in a serious relationship with someone my own age. I always despised teenagers when I was a teenager. [Laughs.] I don't mean that in a pretentious way! I was just never cool enough to be young.
What got you into filmmaking?
I wrote little plays as a kid, but then I started taking it more seriously as a teen and would put up one-act plays in school. I was in a lot of shows in school and studied acting in New York. When I got to Smith College, I was really unhappy because I didn’t fit into the theater community there. A friend of mine told me about this film class at Mount Holyoke and offered to help me out if I took it with her, so I did. She wanted to be a filmmaker, not me. But then everything change once I started. I was so bored and lonely and such a stoner that I had no joy in life, and when I discovered this class, suddenly I got so excited about something and I hadn’t gotten excited in so long. It was like falling in love.
What’s next for you?
Right now, I have a television series that I’m developing, so a lot of my efforts are focused on packaging that. It went through the Sundance Labs and it’s a comedy about a 30-year-old who was a lesbian her entire life and comes out as bisexual. It's her story of going out with men for the first time in her adult life and how she deals with the confusion around that. It also takes a look at her best friendship with a straight guy. It’s a little bit like Seinfeld, it’s a little bit like Louie.
I’m also developing another feature film with the producer of Appropriate Behavior and it’s based on a YA novel that we both love. We’re really excited about that. That’ll be my second feature.
What do you say to people who say bisexuality is a myth?
All you can do is laugh. It doesn’t anger me because it's so stupid. It's like someone saying, "The sky is red!" It’s like, "OK, that's your view of the world. Good luck with that."
Tara Aquino is a contributing writer who loves all things indie film and LGBT cinema. Hit her up with recommendations here: @t_akino.
