Indian Helicopter Parents over the Top

Kaavya Viswanathan wrote How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life while at Harvard (2006) about Opal's obsession with getting into the big H.  It is a LOL comedy about her parents' effort to make her more interesting and ultimately how she falls for a classmate who is not an object of desire (life's what happens while your busy making plans).  BTW, the title says it all, there's nothing more than the first kiss !  But she captures the high school moment perfectly.  The doting parents create HOWGAL (How Opal Will Get a Life) and have regular strategy sessions with their daughter. 

Funniest line - "he had been very impressed by my familiarity with emerging markets in nanotechnology"  (183). 

One problem - she was caught plagiarizing, including passages from Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories, as well as books by Megan McCafferty, Sophie Kinsella, Meg Cabot, and Tanuja Desai Hidier.  Little, Brown & Co. recalled all copies of the book.

Meet the Patels is a real life documentary directed and filmed by Geeta Patel, who makes a brief appearance towards the end of the film. Here the helicopter parents seek a wife for their son Ravi.  But he has secretly been living with a redhead.  Just like Opal, life (the redhead) is what happens while busy making plans (for "real" partner).  Most Patels derive from Gujarat state.  Ravi's parents, Champa and Vasant, turn out to have an extraordinary relationship and are a testimonial to arranged marriages, much to everyone's chagrin !!

Director Desiree Akhavan Plays Herself in Appropriate Behaviour

Appropriate Behaviour (2014) is a British comedy film, written and directed by Desiree Akhavan, the film stars Akhavan as Shirin, a bisexual Persian American woman in hipster Brooklyn struggling to rebuild her life after breaking up with her girlfriend.  Shirin is struggling to be an ideal Persian daughter (of well-to-do expats), a politically correct bisexual, and a hip young Brooklynite but fails miserably in her attempt at all identities.

Hard to believe she was voted ugliest person at Horace Mann (she commuted from Rockland County). This is a woman who has electric beauty.  I'm always fascinated by young women directors who have the courage to act in their own films.  Akhavan is candid about sex, and she has a great scene when a three-way she’s involved in after a couple pick her up in a bar goes weirdly wrong because the man suspects his partner is into her in ways he doesn’t like. There is also a great moment when she is given self-esteem coaching by the assistant in a lingerie store who says she deserves a great bra: “Just because your breasts are small, it doesn’t mean they’re not legitimate.”  Akhavan has a loopy lampooning spirit, ultimately, and at one point she clocks the deadpan tone of her own film when Shirin lambasts one of her dates, "What's up with your passive disinterest in everything? What happened at Wesleyan that did this to you?"