Appropriate Behaviour - film review: less funny than Girls

Iranian actress/writer/director Desiree Akhavan has created a vehicle for herself that – because it’s set in Brooklyn and involves sex, work and hipsters – has already been compared to Girls.

Actually, Akhavan is less funny than Lena Dunham. Twentysomething, bi-sexual Shirin is humiliated many, many times but most of the scenarios (a film-making job involving rowdy five year olds; a jealous attack on her brother’s girlfriend) feel contrived.

Akhavan has limbs like Miranda Hart and, at times, seems as desperate to please. Yet she’s got real charisma. When she stops trying so hard, the film soars. An initially exciting, increasingly grim, threesome is so good it hurts.