“What would you say if your daughter said that her boyfriend had forced her to fall down the stairs and that he meant no harm?” This type of question is central to the plot of ‘It Ends with Us’, which is Adopted from the best selling novel of the same name, written by Colleen Hoover. A message picture, it depicts the struggle involved to free one from the continuous cycle of domestic violence. There is no shadow of a doubt in presenting this chaos.
Having witnessed the funeral of her distant father in Maine and sustained a deal of emotional damage, our damsel in distress the well-dressed Lily Bloom (Blake Lively, the best clotheshorse movie star since Kay Francis) becomes quite restless in her search of Boston engineer; she breaches a rooftop to admire the exquisite skyline ignoring everything.
Defending herself against Ryle Kincaid (Played by Justin Baldoni, who also directs the film) who is a neurosurgeon (of course), Lily is barely able to complete her self-examination. Out of nowhere, Baldoni approaches Lily possessed with such fury that she has no time to process it; He was hurling Steel chairs across the rooftop. Rather than being repulsed by such horrible behaviour, we see Lily captivated with his hotness and megawatt smile.
As soon as the flirtation game fires up, seeing the surgeon scheduled to return to the hospital, Ryle picks the phone and asks what’s so urgent.
Of course, this isn’t the last one we see of Ryle. He just is the brother to Allysa (Jenny Slate), the eccentric, bored and rich housewife who Lily decides to hire to help her take care of the Cottage core florist’s shop. Even when saying that she just wants to be friends, Ryle still is going after her regardless of her many words of no, just like she ignores all his red flags. It is quite sad to say ‘Lust is a hell of a drug, a bad one too’.
Pretty soon, what started as Ryle’s negging transformed into a horrifyingly possessive and obsessive jealousy. There are emotional manipulations in which Ryler first makes awful dinner remarks just so he can gain her emotions: “I love you.” This was only one of the ways he used emotional manipulation making him a very psychologically violent person. Lily’s slowly waking up to the fact that it isn’t just seeing someone they barely wanted to, they are clearly seeing how they are a punching bag for Ryler’s anger.
In another part, the pioneering love between teenage Lily (Isabela Ferrer) and schoolmate Atlas (Alex Neustaedter) is depicted. The boy has a hearth of gold but has been through so much in such a little time; he’s staying in an abandoned house as he has runaway from an abusive family situation.
Or, in contrast, Atlas weeping privately from a healing perspective can be construed as a wish on his part for Lily’s peace and happiness. For her, Atlas is the ideal man able to provide soothing affection when after watching her father repeatedly horrifically attack her mother she has to suppress her fear. Both characters do encounter an exquisite level of professionalism thanks to the writers as well as assisting directors.
Lord help them all, Gianni and Sklenar share an outrageous chemistry that occurs in so few forms their intertwined frames and softer togetherness exude such a gentleness that makes embracing seem divine. And while the pair share sincere glances and gentle touches, their presence is repressed by the surrounding sorrow that they yearn to reach. Lively, always the optimist, felt so close to everyone, as if the world never liked this and wouldn’t put up with such pain.
In these initially, fragile moments paved with a tinge of belief that all of this would not be as terrible as expected, the intense nature of Lively’s portrayal beautifully fills the void created by touchy but scattered connections making everything crash down, disaster after disaster.
Lily also has the same wild, tousled straw blonde tresses seen on Sadie Sink that impersonates the lead character of the short film. The short film recreated the most climactic moment of domestic violence in the film which happens to be in the couple’s kitchen. Later, let us recall the scene in which Lily is shown in the process of acquiring power while attempting to restart her life which is set to Swift’s “My Tears Ricochet” (which is already a spoiler for the song’s topic. For Swifties, I apologize).
“It Ends With Us” is an attractive film. Baldoni and DP Barry Peterson mastered the ideal close-up in mid-range angles which accentuates the emotions and sparkle in the eyes of the movie stars which enables to audience to feel the journey along with them even when the characters are more puppets than real actors. Any customer would have no intention of visiting a flower shop like Lily’s which feels like a Pinterest dream gone wrong. Even though Lively sported more than her fair share of eye catching outfits for A Simple Favor, it seems that
Lively tries her utmost best to bring emotional depth to Lily so we witness her with some form of internal character development, but this evolution is mostly blocked due to the film surrounding her.
I could not stop remembering “Alice, Darling,” Mary Nighy’s brilliant film from a few years back regarding intimate partner violence in which Anna Kendrick is trapped in a toxic relationship, about her character suffocating inside of psychological abuse.
In that movie, the character played by Kendrik was portrayed as a whole individual with friends who help her break out of the codependent’s cage. The outlines of Lily’s mother and her best friend Allysa and Jenny (Amy Morton) these female figures are marginalized, only appearing in a few scenes that mostly serve as supporting structures to the story.
The PG-13 rating does not really allow for the graphic depictions of violence that Ryle perpetrates on Lily, or the father violence that was shown in flashbacks, to come out much (and usually in the form of slow motion or discontinuous montages), while Christy Hall’s script should have been written with a little tact, in her oftentimes ‘as the father of daughters’ she goes ahead and focuses on the reason why masculinity is toxic that, especially his father in law, these reasons should have helped to understand the psychology, let alone the economics. It is not even suitable for explaining why women in abusive relationships choose to remain with their partners.
Yet, this theme which can actually become the center of the whole plot is only mentioned in one short episode about a conversation between Lily and her parents. Everything changes again when Atlas returns to Lily’s adult life, and the love triangle which is not necessary, 871 makes it possible for Lily’s life to again revolve around the men in it.
“It Ends with Us” is definitely not that kind of a bad movie. At some moments, it is indeed rather good and the key ideas are formulated in a very deliberate manner. What I would have liked to see more is Lily’s subjectivity, her existence after trauma, and most importantly, how she exists for and with herself and not for others.
For more movies visit 123Movies.