It Ends With Us: sincere and intelligent drama suffers from an underdeveloped protagonist
Justin Baldoni’s adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel is subtle and convincing in his handling of domestic abuse, but Blake Lively’s character is let down by a weak script.
Based on Colleen Hoover’s bestselling 2016 book, It Ends With Us is a message film smuggled into cinemas as a romantic drama – revealing its tricks so slowly that you, too, feel like you’re being had by a master manipulator you thought you loved. It centres on Lily (Blake Lively) as she navigates a romance with the charming – if overly persistent – neurosurgeon Ryle (Justin Baldoni, also the film’s director), while still grappling with memories of domestic abuse she witnessed her mother suffer.
Baldoni’s approach is skilfully deceptive, making the audience question whether or not similar patterns of abuse are also taking place in Lily’s new relationship until we are deep into the narrative. Lily confesses early on that she can be an “unreliable narrator,” and scenes of violence which were initially obvious to us as innocent accidents are replayed with subtle shifts to show how she may be rewriting these memories to fool others – or perhaps herself. It makes clear, too, that perpetrators shouldn’t be limited to unhelpful stereotypes of angry, boozy blue collar workers. As we see Lily gradually reduced from sassy and independent to stricken and pliant, we’re encouraged to see her abuser not as a cartoon villain, but as someone who has experienced trauma themselves; being abused, or an abuser, is something that can happen to anyone.
What isn’t plausible, however, is ‘Lily Bloom’ herself – a cipher of a protagonist with a passion (flowers, of course) in place of a personality and a twee soundtrack trailing behind her. It’s a shame, too, that the film’s compelling slipperiness gives way to a didactic ending, where it’s also infuriatingly intimated that one would need to be a father to a daughter to know that it’s wrong to harm women. There are some lazy mistakes, too – we’re meant to be in Boston, and yet we are shown an establishing shot of London pub The Sherlock Holmes with ‘Greene King – Bury St Edmunds’ clearly visible on the door. At one point Lily inexplicably goes to sleep without removing her fishnet tights before pulling on pyjama bottoms. And is she really the type of person to drink neat Scotch at a party?
It Ends With Us has moments of intelligence and moving sincerity. It is mostly handsomely mounted and framed: warm, rich cinematography in the flashbacks to autumnal Maine provide a gauzy atmosphere for the teen love, and in modern day Boston, Baldoni frames Ryle and Lily in close-ups that, cannily, first seem romantic before becoming claustrophobic.
And despite having little to work with on the page, Lively brings a steeliness to Lily that shows how powerful, independent women of megawatt sparkle can fall prey to manipulation. Had the film given her an inner life, this may have been a career-best performance. If only the characters felt as realistic as their predicaments.
► It Ends With Us is in UK cinemas now.