THE STORY – Lily Bloom moves to Boston to chase her lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid soon sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, she begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan, suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle gets upended, leaving her with an impossible choice.
THE CAST – Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Jenny Slate, Hasan Minhaj & Brandon Sklenar
THE TEAM – Justin Baldoni (Director) & Christy Hall (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 130 Minutes
When a novel becomes a cultural phenomenon, a film adaptation inevitably follows. And so it is with Colleen Hoover’s “It Ends With Us,” which became a sensation among book readers on TikTok (in 2021, five years after it was originally published). With such massive popularity comes massive detractors as well, and wars have raged all over the internet regarding the novel’s overall quality as well as the characters and general message. For those who are not familiar with the novel, the “It” of the title refers to domestic violence, and such a touchy subject matter can go very wrong very easily, especially in a book that uses the tropes familiar to the ones of romance novels to tell its story, entwining love and abuse in ways that will undoubtedly push some readers away and cause others to take away the wrong message. Reader, I will be upfront: I have not read any of Hoover’s novels, so I cannot comment on what, if any, changes were made to this particular story for its glossy Hollywood transfer or which version is better. I can say that it is clear that everyone involved in making the film deeply believes in an anti-domestic violence message and approaches the material with an earnestness that works in the film’s favor as well as to its detriment.
The film’s plot revolves around Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), who is about to open the flower shop of her dreams in Boston. After returning home from her father’s funeral in Maine (unable to find even one nice thing to say about her abusive father in her eulogy, she left in the middle of the service), she sneaks up to a rooftop to be alone with the city. Here, she meets one of the building’s residents, Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who also directs), when he slams open the door and kicks a chair. They share some “dark truths” with each other, and he admits that he wants to have sex with her, but nothing is committed. She rejects him, but they reconnect months later when he visits his sister Allysa (Jenny Slate), who just so happens to be working as Lily’s shop assistant. Naturally, they eventually sleep together, despite both of their protestations that they shouldn’t. But then Lily’s high school sweetheart Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) reappears, and Ryle’s violent nature manifests in ways that physically injure Lily. Will she stay with Ryle or escape into Atlas’s open arms?
By far, the strongest element of “It Ends With Us” is how it weaponizes the audience’s knowledge of romantic tropes against them. Ryle exhibits all the classic red flags of most romance novel heroes – he throws things when angry, he won’t stop telling our heroine how much he wants to have sex with her, and arguably stalks her until she gives in – but he’s also an accomplished neurosurgeon, is honest about his emotions, and seems like an all-around average guy (with well above average looks). Baldoni leans into the role with all he’s got, exuding charm and charisma. He and Lively have great chemistry, especially during their first scene together, as they test boundaries and delve into each other’s psyches. Therefore, it’s hard not to fall for him exactly the way Lily does, and when he finally injures her, it comes out of nowhere and seems like an accident. Given that we know the novel’s subject matter, this seems like an odd choice. Still, screenwriter Christy Hall is a brilliant storyteller (as she showed in her debut as a writer/director in this summer’s “Daddio”) who puts the audience directly in Lily’s shoes as she can’t quite figure out if the man she loves actually did hit her or if it was an accident. She, and thus the audience, has only her memory and Ryle’s version of events to rely on, and the latter can easily influence the former. It’s a powerful way to dramatize the insidious nature of domestic violence, providing one possible answer to the question every victim gets asked: Why do you stay with your abuser?
The problem is that the film plays this as a grand melodramatic reveal in its last act, like a twist out of a Shyamalan picture. On a pure storytelling level, it’s not wrong, but it does trivialize the very real physical and emotional damage that comes from domestic violence. The script also overdoes it, ending on a series of scenes that play out like wish fulfillment versions of one of the most difficult conversations a person can have with those closest to them. These scenes contain some powerful lines of dialogue that will doubtless bring many to tears, but it’s far too simple and clean for such a messy, even taboo, subject. The only reason these late scenes work is the cast, all of whom invest their characters with such warmth that you believe their easy acceptance and support of Lily’s situation. Lively manages to make some truly terrible dialogue feel natural, and you feel for her throughout the entire film. Isabela Ferrer, who plays young Lily in flashbacks, perfectly matches Lively’s energy; their performances could be a case study of how to play younger and older versions of the same character. Sklenar makes for a more soulful counterpart to Baldoni’s cocksure attitude while never forgetting Atlas’s dark past. Stage great Amy Morton is devastating in her few scenes as Lily’s mom, showing how living with such abuse for so long can wear you down. Jenny Slate turns in a classic rom-com best friend performance, effortlessly nailing the exact right energy for the flighty but loyal Allysa; you actually buy that this woman really would wander into a closed-looking shop and ask for a job just because she likes the building, and still talk Lily into giving her one even though she readily admits that she doesn’t like flowers.
It’s abundantly clear that everyone involved in the creation of this adaption felt a deep connection to the material. The warmth and earnestness exuding from every frame of “It Ends With Us” wouldn’t be possible without such investment in the material. That same earnestness, though, is precisely what holds the film back in its final scenes. The endless barrage of cliché dialogue flattens the story into something didactic and trite. While the emotions the film stirs up are powerful, it does a disservice to the people it’s trying to reach by denying its subject matter’s messy, complex, and lingering quality. It may not be the Hollywood ending we would expect after the film’s opening scenes, but it’s still very much a Hollywood ending, as glossy as the cover of a brand-new paperback. The film’s ending will likely be a balm for survivors who longed for this kind of ease in their own lives and could very well snap some victims out of their haze and realize that they need to, and can, escape their circumstances. If only it could have also more directly acknowledged the painful, slow-moving nature of that process, “It Ends With Us” could have been genuinely great.
