But it's smartly written and pleasurably played by actors who prefer to tease the comedy from a line rather than punching it.
This might not sound like a laughing matter, but the filmmaker knows how to tease the comedy out of the human condition.
In setting up this premise, Mr. Spasojevic seems to be settling into a De Palmaesque realm of queasy, kinky, suspenseful comedy, teasing the boundary between titillation and revulsion.
Within the past decade, Gus Van Sant provided Nicole Kidman with her breakout role, as an aspiring newscaster, in "To Die For"; the team of Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor made their classics, "Citizen Ruth" and "Election"; and Brian Dannelly enjoyed minor success with the affectionate, teasing "Saved!," a comedy about a teen-ager who is impregnated by her gay boyfriend at a Christian school.
In a climate of rampant confession, where every talk show oracle encourages brutal, unbridled honesty, the premise behind Gerard Strembridge's teasing romantic comedy "About Adam" seems refreshing, even mildly subversive.
Alongside some splendid comedy – the King teasing the unctuously fawning Mayor during an innovative golf game – the play, warmly glowing, became ultimately most affecting in Danny Boyle's production as it moved into a powerful performance of the Mysteries witnessed by the royal party.
I expressed my enthusiasm for taboo-teasing, "offensive" comedy – with the proviso that it brings with it a duty to be careful.
Equivocation is at the heart of literary insult, harnessing seriousness to comedy, earnestness to lightness, teasing the single-minded into taking offence.
Singing and playing the obscure "I Wanna Be Yours," she evoked the golden age of screwball comedy with the sly, teasing innuendo of lines like, "I wanna be all the cream in your dairy/your favorite tooth fairy".
If you work on a comedy show, your basic form of communication is teasing.
