Actualités

If there’s one abiding, persistent thing “Sampung Utos Kay Josh” leaves you bothered throughout its unnecessarily protracted runtime, it’s to spare the moral science lesson. Marius Talampas ostensibly tries to aim for black comedy registers, which should have been a whole load of fun. But the Catholic insistence doesn’t gel well with the garden-variety terrible jokes, most of them painfully ribald and downright unfunny. It takes abundant skill and sharp wit to pull off such a balancing act where there’s coarseness and faith in equal measure.

When there’s such an instance, the film demands a well-fleshed protagonist with a compelling sense of trajectory, an inkling of growth from principle to straying and back to his core. “Sampung Utos Kay Josh” mangles these transitions. It requires a certain levelling, where characters understand others’ fragility and make amends. But the lack of real, urgent inner reckoning stunts the film.