Desiree Akhavan writes, directs and stars in her debut film Appropriate Behaviour Pecadillo Press

“Why the f*ck not” was the response I was given by Desiree Akhavan when I asked her why she wanted to make Appropriate Behaviour, an indie favourite at last years Sundance Film Festival and due for release in the UK this week. Akhavan wrote, directed and starred in the film about a young Brooklynite, Shirin (played by Akhavan) navigating New York after a serious break up with her girlfriend/house mate Maxine (played by Rebecca Henderson).

Akhavan told me: “I wanted to make a film that spoke to me because I wasn’t seeing anything like that around.” As the daughter of parents who fled Iran during the Revolution of 1979, Akhavan has spoken openly in the past of never quite fitting in. She has described herself as a bit of a loner when she studied film and theatre at Smith College, the prestigious women’s liberal arts college in Northampton, Massachusetts. Apparently, she was also voted the most ugly girl in her eighth grade class.

More recently, however, she’s been called the New Lena Dunham; the American actress and writer behind the hit TV show Girls – a show Akhavan also stars in. And yet in Appropriate Behavior the ‘new’ Lena Dunham has written a specific character with a very particular perspective: Shirin is a young Persian female with very traditional parents that know nothing of her bisexuality. It is at once something very different from the straight white female lead in Dunham’s TV show. It seems that despite, or rather because of this specificity, such large audiences have been drawn to Akhavan’s debut film. Akhavan said it was because of the “universal feeling of like you don’t fit in, or making an ass of yourself in front of people.” The fuck ups in Shirin’s life makes her a truly authentic character and something audiences at large can relate to.

Akhavan calls bisexuality one of societies last taboos. “People seem to treat it with such suspicion.”

“Only last night I was having dinner with some friends and they asked me 'Aren't you always looking for something better?' as if to say that because I’m bisexual, I want to sleep with everyone.”

“When I’m in a relationship with a man or a woman, I’m with them. My attention is with them. I’m not looking around for somebody else to come along.” It was only much later, after she had already fallen in love with a man during her time at Smith College, a relationship that lasted for years, that she identified as bisexual.

Coming out was something gradual for Akhavan, and this is the same for the protagonist in Akhavan’s film. Shirin struggles in her relationship to satisfy both her girlfriend’s liberal identity and her Persian parent’s idea of the ‘perfect’ Iranian daughter; a commodity that usually comes fully equipped with a pretty Iranian boyfriend – Shirin must be a manufacturing error.

Critics have picked up on the superficial autobiographical similarities between Akhavan and her character – another reason why she has so often been likened to Dunham, who is often said to do the same thing. Akhavan tells me: “In a lot of ways this is my story.”

“I struggled with identity; romance, coming out to my family. But I was never closeted.” She’s not concerned by what audiences might infer from the visible similarities between the actor they see on screen and the one they see in magazines and interviews off screen. She is adamant to tell me her loved ones know the story isn’t real.

“They know Shirin isn’t me.”

This seems to make everything the better after she told me “I got lots of complaints about how whiney Shirin is. But I wanted her to whine... I wanted Shirin to be bratty and entitled. You see countless films with white middle aged men playing entitled characters.” Akhavan is referring to the countless romantic and comedic dramas that almost totally conform to hetero-normative ideas of sexuality.

This reminded me of a scene in Appropriate Beahviour where Shirin and Maxine are talking in a bookshop that has striking similarities to Annie Hall, Woody Allen’s definitive boy meets girl rom-com of 1980s. I asked her if the film’s reference to such a classic heterosexual love story has the purpose to normalise audiences’ ideas of gay rom-coms. She laughed. “I never made that connection.”

“Bisexuality is one of [the film’s] many themes. [But] Annie Hall was the first film I saw that told a beautiful love story that you knew wasn’t going to work out.. No matter how much you root for them […] you know it’s doomed.” But as a reference point, Annie Hall was purposely invoked. Akhavan knew she was “going none consecutive” in the film’s narrative structure.

“You could call it a queer Annie Hall.”

I finally ask that given the film talks about the place of bisexuality so openly and has drawn such a large audience at film festivals, would she think genre categorisation of ‘LGBT+’ or ‘Queer’ would be detrimental to the dialogue Appropriate Behavior is purposely trying to open? “No,” she says, “It's not detrimental to the film itself. It might be detrimental to the commerciality of the film” but Akhavan is clear in stating that such categories are “treating gays like human beings” and these categories are nothing but positive in that respect. The great thing about her new film is that it, like Akhavan, it doesn’t really fit anywhere. Like she says, it’s not only talking about bisexuality; like a pamphlet from LGBT History Month. She says it could just as easily be called ‘an immigrant story’ or ‘a Brooklyn romance’. Like Akhavan, Appropriate Behaviour sits on the edge of categorisation and it is in this grey area that great art is made. I am sure we will be hearing a lot more from Desiree Akhavan in the future. And that can only be a good thing.

Desiree Akhavan will be talking at a Q&A Screening of her new film at the Arts Picturehouse on 4th Thurs March.

Appropriate Behaviour is released in cinemas on 6th March by Peccadillo Pictures