‘Only Beautiful Things to Look At’ Review: A Handsome but Muffled Portrait of State-Sanctioned Cruelty
The film begins with a montage of young Roma women, each shot as though for a studio portrait, impassively absorbing an offscreen voice lecturing them...
Key points
- The film begins with a montage of young Roma women, each shot as though for a studio portrait, impassively absorbing an offscreen voice lecturing them about family planning.
- The first words of argument or protest we hear are from Ingrid (Anna Geislerová), the film’s white protagonist, and she is not talking about reproductive rights at all.
- Ostrochovský’s film, co-written with Marek Leščák, is not anything quite as crude as a white savior narrative, but it is certainly one that assumes the best conduit for a wide audience to understand the cruelty visited on Czechoslovakian Roma families, is the moral awakening of a white woman.
- Jula married within the Roma community, has had two children and is pregnant with an unwanted third.
What happened
The film begins with a montage of young Roma women, each shot as though for a studio portrait, impassively absorbing an offscreen voice lecturing them about family planning. The first words of argument or protest we hear are from Ingrid (Anna Geislerová), the film’s white protagonist, and she is not talking about reproductive rights at all. Ostrochovský’s film, co-written with Marek Leščák, is not anything quite as crude as a white savior narrative, but it is certainly one that assumes the best conduit for a wide audience to understand the cruelty visited on Czechoslovakian Roma families, is the moral awakening of a white woman. Jula married within the Roma community, has had two children and is pregnant with an unwanted third. Eventually, just like Chlpík’s limpid camera, Agata comes to see the beauty in both, when in the film’s most moving moment, the sisters tacitly reconcile while Jula’s kids splash about in the tub at bathtime. Instead, the film insistently returns us to Ingrid.
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