It Ends with Us
SONY
Domestic violence has never looked so romantic in Justin Baldoni’s It Ends with Us, a horrendous adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s equally as trite book that attempts to put a TikTok filter on a toxic relationship and abuse. Manufactured ‘actress’ Blake Lively stars in the movie as Lily Bloom, a middle-aged woman who longs to start anew after her abusive father (Kevin McKidd) passes away.
As she prepares to open up an (always empty) Pinterest flower shop in Downton Boston, she meets Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni), and the two begin to fall in love. Or do they? After Lily meets Ryle’s sister, Allysa (Jenny Slate), who helps her around with the opening of the flower shop, the two agree to remain friends. But Ryle constantly pressures Lily into getting into a relationship she doesn’t feel entirely prepared to take on, even if she enjoys being around him, and he loves being around her.
The romance blossoms and the two begin to live together. One day, the couple, alongside Lily’s mother (Amy Morton), visits one of Boston’s new restaurants and meets Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), Lily’s former lover whom he met when he left her mother’s abusive household. The two developed a special relationship together, but after Lily’s dad almost beat him to death for making love to her daughter, they never saw each other again. Flashbacks with a Young Lily and Atlas cross-cut with the present-day storyline, and the two are played by Isabela Ferrer and Alex Neustaedter and are far more effective at presenting an abusive relationship and the attempt to heal away from it through Lily and Atlas healing together.
Ferrer and Neustaedter have palpable chemistry together, even if the writing they have to deal with is not as solid as it should be. But it pales in comparison to how ridiculously inert Christy Hall’s screenplay is for its present-day scenes, which wraps one of the most toxic relationships depicted on-screen in some time as a romance full of love and passion. But it isn’t, and Lily can clearly see the warning signs. Yet, she gets wrapped up inside Ryle’s finger, thinking it’s no matter, until she reunites with Atlas and opens a wound she knows will never be closed down.
But the movie never treats the subject of domestic abuse and violence with the care and sensitivity needed to take itself seriously. When it does it through the prism of egregious product placement, such as Capital One Credit Cards or Blake Lively’s own Betty Buzz drink company, it doesn’t feel as if Baldoni (or Lively) truly want to say something meaningful and true about the difficult subject of domestic violence, especially wanting to make survivors of abusive relationships feel seen and heard. At the very least, it should act as a cathartic moment for victims, giving them the satisfaction they likely didn’t have of closing an abusive relationship and hope they can come away from it feeling stronger than ever.
But the film’s treatment of abuse literally bludgeons audiences over the head with an overbearing BWOOOOOOOOOOM-heavy score reminiscent of Darren Aronofsky’s The Whale (and guess what? Composed by the same person!) shaking the audience to their core so they can feel sorry for Lily, while more ‘sensitive’ moments land with the biggest thud. For instance, the film’s biggest reveal, in which the audience finds out how Ryle and Allysa’s brother has died, should be shocking (and tragic). Instead, it’s the single funniest moment of the entire picture, one that has no idea how to realistically draw human characters that feel anchored in reality and not through a depiction of what TikTok users believe is the real world.
The world of It Ends with Us acts as an excuse for Lively to not only promote her own products but to wear the most unspeakably lavish dresses out there, so Barry Peterson’s camera can linger on her (very) expensive wear and hairdos. But there’s no substance beyond this. Lively is not a serious actor. She’s never been and never will be. Her inability to muster up any natural emotion should be studied by any aspiring actor. She has zero sense of emotional power in any of the film’s biggest scenes, because she believes this film acts like a personal showcase for her ‘brand’ instead of taking the subject matter with the seriousness and sensitivity it needs.
It also doesn’t help that Baldoni isn’t a particularly good filmmaker, and there have been reports of a clash between Lively and the director/actor that reportedly soured production. Who knows who did what, but Baldoni’s inexperience at knowing how to depict the story should not be overstated, alongside Lively’s overinflated ego at wanting the film to promote her personal brand and image rather than acting as a gap-bridger for survivors of domestic violence. The whole thing reeks of insincerity, whether from Lively’s non-performance to Baldoni acquiescing to her demands.
Baldoni is a much better actor than Lively, and represents Ryle’s anger in a more compelling way than when he initially introduces audiences to the character, throwing a chair (and smoking a joint) like Mark in Tommy Wiseau’s The Room. In fact, he’s the only actor whose performance improves as the story progresses, while other actors can’t hold weight. Sklenar’s gravitas from 1923 transposed as Atlas acts as a welcomed presence when he appears an hour into the picture but has virtually nothing of interest to do beyond that.
Peterson’s visual language is also lacking. Lots of medium shots that feel more like a glossy commercial than an actual movie, with his camera lingering on each product to ensure audiences see it while filming scenes of rough violence with lots of shaky cam to keep it PG-13. None of it has impact, because none of the characters act like human beings. They feel completely alien to the real world and would rather focus on frivolous brands than saying something, anything, really, about domestic violence.
As Lily delivers her “It Ends with Us” line, one wonders exactly what ends with them. Of course, the cycle of domestic violence, but what did Baldoni (and, by extension, Hoover) want to say about Lily’s experience? That it’s fine to be in an abusive relationship as long as you can find a way to promote your products and it’s cinematically presented through the prism of a TikTok influencer? Yikes.
This is a repulsive film. There’s no two ways around it. It’s repulsive not only in how it uses its subject matter to promote products down the audience’s throat, but in how it visually (and thematically) presents domestic violence as not that big a deal when it is a pretty big deal. It never wants to raise awareness or say something meaningful on the issue, which is the most repulsive aspect of all. If you’ve got nothing of value to say and want to glorify the subject instead, what are you doing? Like her husband, Lively’s oeuvre will never be taken seriously, because she does not want to be an actress, but a brand. Save that for commercials and let the artists who have something to say on abuse (such as André Forcier with Ababouiné) fill our screens.