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30-year-old New York-based filmmaker Desiree Akhavan has the sort of sharp, thoughtful voice that some viewers may not have realised they were missing in cinema as of late. Now, after the release of her first feature film, Appropriate Behaviour, it seems impossible to think that we survived so long without it.

Akhavan plays Shirin, a disaffected Brooklynite dealing with the fallout of a bad breakup with her girlfriend Maxine (Rebecca Henderson), which we witness early on, culminating in Shirin throwing a gift she had given Maxine — a strap-on — into a dumpster. The outlines of their relationship are slowly coloured-in throughout the film, as snapshots of their coupledom, from meet-cute to inevitable sexual ennui, are cleverly doled out. It is a smart structure that — in addition to lending some sad irony to the flashback scenes — allows our sympathies towards Shirin to always be shifting and doubling-back.

One other matter of note about Shirin, and Akhavan herself, is that she is a second-generation Iranian American, and the specificities of her family dynamics play a large role in Appropriate Behaviour. What’s refreshing about the scenes with Shirin’s family is how they balance the tropes of “immigrant parents with their own set of beliefs and standards” (as Shirin puts off coming out to them) and a genuine feeling of affection and humour, rare in movies about youth and independence, where protagonists too often resent their parental figures.

One innovative feature of Akhavan’s script is not only in the hilarious, casual, so recognisably millennial way in which the characters employ language — tossing each other references and snide quips as if they were hacky sacks, lazily volleyed between friends — but in its frequent reflexivity on its own usages of language itself. During their first meeting, Shirin and her girlfriend-to-be argue over when it is acceptable to use the word “dyke”, and the various emotional meanings the term can take on: as an intended compliment, as a self-appointed label, or as a still-offensive slur. Lexical meaning, as Akhavan understands all too well, can be as varied as the identities and backgrounds of the characters speaking.

Appropriate Behaviour has already drawn some well-deserved comparisons to peak-period Woody Allen, largely due to its Annie Hall structure, but there is also a detectable undercurrent of Noah Baumbach coursing through this film, in its wicked satire of a certain type of Park Slope parent, represented here by Scott Adsit, and the co-ops and baby names and after-school programs that go along with this type. Go for the biting humour, and stay for the emotion underneath.