For both performer and audience member, there's a fine line between stand-up comedy and pain – ask anyone who's done a few tours of duty on the Edinburgh Fringe, on either side of the stage. A bad comic is profoundly hard to watch, either because s/he's deeply aware that s/he's failing, or because s/he isn't. Even a good comic often sources laughs from self-exposure, self-humiliation, or an utterly draining expense of energy. Getting up on stage and exuding joy and confidence isn't what we pay them for; whether executed well or badly, comedy is an art form closely wedded to discomfort and discontent. What a perfect title, then, for a film about a stand-up comedian: Crying With Laughter. At the start of Justin Molotnikov's unpredictable, risky thriller, our protagonist Joey Frisk (Stephen McCole) doesn't actually know how deeply troubled he is. He's become accustomed to balling his angst up into hardpacked, fiercely misanthropic gags, hurling it out at an audience, and thinking no more of it. What's more, the strategy is paying off: his bullish, blokey, PCbe- damned style is drawing interest from big promoters. Still, all that anger is coming from somewhere – and it takes a jarring intervention from Joey's past to bring him face-to-face with what he's really fighting against. One enduring problem with fictional comedians onscreen is that ersatz standup performed by an actor rarely seems to work. Dustin Hoffman in Lenny (1974) lacked the crucial quality of being Lenny Bruce. Sally Field and Tom Hanks weren't funny enough in Punchline (1988). And Aaron Sorkin's TV drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, based around a fictionalised version of the US sketch show Saturday Night Live, stumbled because there was just too much fakeness about pretend writers crafting gags for pretend comics to earn the pretend laughter of an audience that wasn't really there. Crying With Laughter really distinguishes itself on this point: Joey's stand-up and Stephen McCole's delivery are genuinely funny and subversive, as well as being wholly convincing as a smokescreen for inner anguish. The ominous appearance of old schoolmate Frank (Malcolm Shields) at one of Joey's gigs ultimately rips open a psyche carefully constructed to conceal great suffering – but the fact that the whole film is framed as one of Joey's routines wryly points out that defence mechanisms aren't easily removed, and that knowing just how you're damaged doesn't take the damage away.