Colleen Hoover’s 2016 memoir of domestic abuse and unresolved childhood trauma received a huge second lease of life when the bookworm community on TikTok, #BookTok, seized it five years later. This fitting story about fresh starts became a bestseller in 2022. Millions of people picked it up and found a kind of Bible for abuse survivors.
Come 2024 and the intelligent and sensitive film version of the story will more than satisfy this crowd. The film begins in true Nicholas Sparks style as an adaptation of teenage love with homeless boys and adult flings with handsome hunks. Fast-forward a couple of years and the theme delves into toxic men and the exploitative nature of abusive relationships.
Blake Lively fills in for Hoover’s Lily Bloom, a young woman relocating to Boston to open a flower shop after the death of her father. She comes from a traumatic childhood having witnessed her father bulling and beating her mother. She expresses her emotions mockingly at the funeral as she remarks, “It’s one of the most beautiful things I’ve never written,” about the eulogy she has been asked to deliver.
Enter Director Justin Baldoni’s attractive neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid to provide comfort in a seductive rooftop meet. Armed with a dream job, seductive smiles, and a toned body, we see Lily’s early hesitancy melting as she develops a relationship with him. However, her early wariness is more than justified when we realise that Ryle is a self-described commitment phobic who exhibits his own warning signs.
Just as Lily is adjusting to her new life, she encounters her first love, Atlas Corrigan. Naturally, memories of her first years flood back. Some are priceless, while others are best forgotten. Making decisions is central to this story. You learn about Lily’s ideal life and the life she wishes to abandon as the narrative veers between the past and the present.
Slow-burning thriller
The faithful adaptation, directed by actor-director Justin Baldoni, is sexy, introspective, empowering, triggering, and melancholic. Even though the plot is obvious, it develops like a slow-burning thriller. Though it all seems a little soap operatic, Baldoni deftly handles and examines this element, never pardoning or trivialising the violence or mistaking it for passion. It’s definitely not a light watch, and it’s emotionally charged.
This makes us recall the likes of movies based on such topics in the likes of ‘Provoked’, “Enough’, ‘If Someone Had Known’, ‘Break Up, and ‘Sleeping with the Enemy’. You might get the feeling of déjà vu at the beginning but Baldoni soon sets a unique tone to this work.
An exceptional feature of the film is that Baldoni manages to fit a lot of parallel stories into a brief running length. You can sympathise with a love story, but you can also see parallels to the person Lily doesn’t want to be. This is more of a tale of resiliency and maturing to break the cycle of emotional and physical abuse than it is a love story.
On the surface, this is a compelling and valuable story to tell as viewers how Lily alternates between two timelines—the present and memories of her past—while she struggles with a stressful and unsafe home life—a situation she never wanted to be in again—only to find herself back in it. This is a serious problem since both men and women grow up trying to stay away from the same kinds of unstable relationships, only to find themselves in them without the means to leave.
Romantic comedy
The visual language of the movie, created by cinematographer Barry Peterson, plays a crucial role in what lets the film down. The movie itself is beautiful, but it focuses more on romantic comedy than romantic drama. Each scene is given the same temperature, whether it encompasses full or light tension.
The colours are vibrant, suggesting a constant sense of safety. Every scene has the same visual aesthetic, so there is no sense of real danger, realism, or weight.
The same elements are present in moments where Lily is recalling a violent act committed by her father against her mother, going on a double date with Ryle and Allysa, or being flung down some stairs.
Sadly, Blake Lively, who serves as the film’s anchor, does not adequately portray Lily. This multi-layered story deserves a much stronger actor who doesn’t wander around like a spectator in their own story. She has a stunning, vibrant presence, but her acting skills are very limited. This detracts us from the film’s depth.
Her performance lacks deep elements, empathy, and strength, making it all seem a little shallow.
‘It Ends With Us”, the book, boldly argues for the need to completely end violent relationships. Though one could argue that it becomes overly clichéd towards the end, the statement is well-made and the message is as clear as it can be.
The same goes for the visual adaptation but with less persistence. There are moments in the movie that make you uneasy and leave you thinking, yet it is a comforting thought to those who can identify with Lily’s emotions.
