Metacritic reviews

Forget its generic title, its breakup setup, and its indie-standard Brooklyn walk-and-talks: Writer/director Desiree Akhavan's Appropriate Behavior is the freshest comedy of life and love in the city since Obvious Child.

Funny, unique, and entirely inappropriate, Appropriate Behavior is a supremely satisfying and irreverent take on the New York rom-com.

Appropriate Behavior isn’t a narrative about ethnicity or even LGBT struggles in the traditional sense, but rather a means of exploring the problems that result from reinforcing those very barriers. In the process, it introduces a thoroughly modern voice.

Appropriate Behavior is very funny, even while it’s also being real and heartfelt. It’s a raw story with refined production values, and Akhavan is so open and true in the lead role that what could be an overly insular story instead feels relatable and amusing.

For all the brazen charms of this warm, funny debut, though, its quieter moments signal a profundity that’s really worth getting excited about.

Akhavan turns out to be a distinctive and oddly charismatic performer with exquisite comic timing.

Desiree Akhavan's tale of queer post-breakup funk shows more nuance, and racial dimension, than its cinematic cousins.

Ultimately, Appropriate Behavior works almost in spite of itself; so efficiently does the film explain why Shirin and Maxine split up that eventually it lags behind its own premise.

This tart, sexually frank portrait of a disintegrating relationship — and its long, bitter aftermath — packs plenty of punch in its best scenes, but it also frequently tests audience patience with its relentless deadpan affectlessness and insistence on leaving no Brooklyn cliche unmined.

Sifting the pieces of a broken lesbian relationship, the slender, seemingly autobiographical film has its share of neurotic charms and funny one-liners, but it’s too tentative about digging into its identity conflicts -- sexual or cultural.