It Ends With Us Is Great If You’ve Read The Book Or Not
It Ends With Us is a good movie. For all its flaws in depicting domestic abuse accurately or lining up with the book perfectly, the film, on its own, is well acted, well directed, and a well told story. If you like romantic thrillers, you should go see it.
It Ends With Us
Maybe it’s because I grew up watching Sleeping with the Enemy, The Rainmaker, and Not Without My Daughter that I never expected the movies I watched to come with press about the issues that lay inside, or whether they were picture perfect depictions of the real life scenarios they portrayed.
It Ends With Us has gotten a lot of negative press around these issues, and I think it’s taking away from the fact that this movie is well done.
I went to see It Ends With Us in theaters one year after having read the book, interested to see the cinematic take on this romance turned thriller. Blake Lively plays Lily Bloom, a young woman living in Boston about to open up a flower shop she’s dreamed of owning her whole life.
She meets and falls in love with Ryle (played by Justin Baldoni, who also directs the film), a slick, super successful neurosurgeon with a dark side. The two are instantly interested in each other, but Ryle doesn’t believe in relationships, and Lily is not a one-night-stand kinda girl.
Romance And Friendship
At the same time, Lily becomes best friends with Ryle’s sister, Allysa (Jenny Slate), who helps Lily at her flower shop. The first two thirds of the movie are entirely centered around Lily and Ryle falling in love.
The romance is hot and heavy, sweet and sexy, and both actors do an excellent job of convincing us they’re madly in love. The audience also experiences Lily’s flashbacks to her teenage years, when she lived at home with her now deceased father and her mother. We see her father being extremely violent with her mother.
Abuse
We also see teenage Lily befriend and fall in love with a young homeless boy, Atlas.
As the romance in It Ends With Us between Ryle and Lily heats up, Lily runs into Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) again after all this time. He’s opened a restaurant, and the couple, and Lily’s mother, are sitting down to eat.
Later, Ryle burns his hand and “accidentally” elbow Lily in the face. A few scenes later, Ryle “accidentally” pushes Lily down a stairwell.
The Truth
What I love about this movie is how real it is. Victims of abuse really do love their abusers, and abusers really do feel like they are loving their victims. They also have a million justifications for why they are the way they are and promises to change that sound so true.
See It In Theaters
GFR SCORE
It Ends With Us is cinematically beautiful, the story unfolds in a clean and clear arc, and the way the domestic abuse is portrayed is true to life in the way the victim will remember it as less than serious and the abuser will gaslight the victim. I don’t think this movie has to be one thing, or that it has to tell one story. Colleen Hoover, as the daughter of an abusive father, wanted to tell this story. The movie does a great job of following her lead. I think we should do the same.
