Only Beautiful Things to Look At: A Visually Striking but Emotionally Distant Examination of Roma Sterilization

Slovakian director Ivan Ostrochovský's "Only Beautiful Things to Look At" transports viewers to 1980s Czechoslovakia, a period marked by the state's systematic and racist campaign of coerced sterilization targeting the Roma population. The film meticulously recreates the era's fashions and interiors, yet its polished visual style creates an emotional distance that makes the atrocities feel like relics of a distant past rather than recent history. In reality, the sterilization policy persisted well into the 21st century across both the Czech and Slovak Republics.

A Period Drama That Feels Too Distant

The film opens with a montage of young Roma women, each framed like a studio portrait, silently enduring an offscreen voice that lectures them about family planning. The voice concludes with the disingenuous claim that sterilization allows Gypsy women to improve their family's quality of life. Cinematographer Juraj Chlpík lights and frames these women with evident dignity, yet none of them are given a voice. The first words of protest in the film come not from any Roma character, but from Ingrid, a white doctor portrayed by Anna Geislerová, and her grievance is about being passed over for a promotion rather than any injustice committed against her patients.

Ingrid works at a hospital where a significant portion of her duties involves evaluating and carrying out sterilizations. The procedure leaves patients with a small scar beneath the navel, colloquially referred to as "the bow." Outside the hospital, Ingrid enjoys an idyllic existence with her music teacher husband Maros, played by Vlad Ivanov. Their countryside home, with its glass-walled bedroom overlooking a lush forest, resembles something from a fairy tale. Their evenings are spent reading, drinking wine, and listening to classical music, while Ingrid's days off include leisurely forest walks and watching Roma children play in a nearby river.

The More Compelling Story Remains Secondary

Ingrid's moral discomfort with her work emerges gradually through her growing friendship with Agata, a warm-hearted hospital orderly played by Simona Boledovičová. Agata is reserved about her Romani identity, and her personal history proves to be the film's richest narrative thread. As an orphan, Agata was separated from her sister Jula, portrayed by Eva Mores, and the two went on to lead starkly different lives. Jula married within the Roma community, has two children, and is pregnant with an unwanted third. Agata, by contrast, has lived more independently, sharing a home with a roommate and growing serious with a boyfriend who is a white soldier — a detail that surprises Jula.

The dynamic between the sisters is layered with unspoken tensions. Agata moves fluidly between Jula's cramped apartment in a deteriorating building where children play in dirty stairwells and Ingrid's elegant home. The film's most affecting moment arrives when the sisters silently reconcile during a bathtime scene with Jula's children. This storyline held the potential to explore the lasting consequences for Roma women who bore "the bow," many of whom were deceived into undergoing a procedure explained in a language they did not speak or documented in forms they could not read.

Aesthetic Beauty as a Liability

Co-written by Ostrochovský and Marek Leščák, the film does not descend into a white savior narrative, but it operates on the assumption that a wide audience needs a white woman's moral awakening to access the cruelty inflicted on Roma families. This choice proves frustrating, particularly because Agata's story is far more compelling than Ingrid's. Yet the film persistently redirects attention back to Ingrid — her sleepless nights, her languid mornings in rumpled sheets, and macro close-ups that emphasize her blonde hair, fair skin, and blue eyes.

The film's climax resolves its central conflict with what feels like a glib miracle, and the overall loveliness of the presentation becomes a genuine liability. By placing the real suffering of the Roma population behind multiple layers of aesthetic mediation and a white protagonist's perspective, the film raises an unavoidable question: why offer only beautiful things to look at when the ugly realities it references demand far more direct and courageous attention?

Ostrochovský's intentions are undeniably sincere, and the film brings attention to a chapter of European history that remains insufficiently acknowledged. However, its artistic choices ultimately blunt the urgency that the subject matter warrants. If this review has sparked your interest in the film or the history it explores, consider sharing this article with others who might benefit from learning about this often-overlooked injustice.

Source: Variety