The phrase "a complicated act" is correct and usable in written English.
It can be used to describe an action or behavior that is intricate, difficult to understand, or involves multiple steps or considerations.
Example: "Negotiating a peace treaty is often seen as a complicated act that requires patience and skill."
Alternatives: "a complex action" or "a difficult task".
Psychologically speaking, it condenses the subtext of the memoir into one powerfully perverse image — that in a complicated act of creative alchemy and betrayal, Fischl managed to snatch success and riches from his mother's poisonous provocations.
Above all, it's a word she applies to the experience of reading her hero, Vladimir Nabokov, to whose work her own literary career has, so far, been a complicated act of homage.
The Spy is the story, to put it very simply, of a complicated act of deadly triple-bluff perpetrated by the British Secret Service against its enemies in the German Democratic Republic, as communist East Germany was then known.
Some analysts believe that North Korea's nuclear weapons programme, and the manner in which Pyongyang has taken on the world, is a complicated act of defiance to convince the powerful North Korean army that the dynasty is strong enough to continue via the Dear Leader's youngest son.
Since this is a complicated act of imaginative reading, we can forgive him the oddnesses and anachronisms that those who know their Homer might find jarring – paper lanterns and the number zero, the sexless goddess Athene given a romantic life, and so on.
What transpired on the City Hall turf, ragged after hundreds of campers had slept there, was a thoughtfully planned and calibrated police show of force against a complicated act of civil disobedience.
"It's a complicated balancing act to persuade people of the necessity to act, while also having the necessity to prove that it will be limited," said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser.
However, a few notable exceptions and regional variants exist, like the complicated act of grabbing an opponent's underwear and using it to flip him onto his back.
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In a rehearsal you can watch individual people engaged in the complicated act of creating art; in a performance this immediacy may be masked by makeup, costumes and polish.
