My knowledge of Booktok comes from the social media posts of a few of my friends. It’s also how It Ends with Us and the names Colleen Hoover and Justin Baldoni first entered my brain. Hoover’s bestseller, with somewhere north of 22 million copies sold, has been impossible to miss ever since. Romance novels get adapted to the big screen all of the time but few penetrate the zeitgeist quite like It Ends with Us, and you can feel it in the excitement for the film version by Baldoni who not only first optioned the rights, but took the helm as director and gave himself the most plum on-screen role. You’d think that would be the guy named “Atlas”, right?
Blake Lively stars as the colorfully named (they all have colorful names, actually) Lily Bloom, a spirited New England florist grieving her father’s death. The night of the funeral she meets the guy who seems too perfect, like he was created to be the hunk of a romance novel. His name is Ryle Kincaid, and with a name like that, you can see why Baldoni chose to play him. Ryle looks like a Greek god, tall and poised but also kinda self-deprecating and slick. Oh, and he’s a neurosurgeon (!) who hangs out on building rooftops (!!) and has trouble with commitment (!!!). He’s giving off “I’m dangerous please fix me” vibes. Lily isn’t buying his schtick in the beginning, but Ryle comes armed with some serious charm. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that he’s the brother of Lily’s new best friend Allysa (Jenny Slate, really strong here), who helped launch her new flower shop. But as their love takes root, Lily begins to see a darker side of Ryle, and it echoes traumatic memories from the past.
Screenwriter Christy Hall (of the Sean Penn/Dakota Johnson film Daddio) knows the assignment. It Ends with Us manages to handle a sensitive issue with as much care as can be mustered while also giving into the melodramatic sweep the genre demands. There’s no easy way to navigate Lily’s complicated, messy backstory. Hall deftly includes flashbacks to a teenage Lily (played by Isabela Ferrer, a spitting image of Lively), her romance with a troubled young man named Atlas (played by Alex Neustaedter, who looks older than the adult version played by Brandon Sklenar), and the domestic abuse suffered by her mother (Amy Morton) at her father’s hands.
Everyone can see the parallels, including Lily. It Ends with Us smartly avoids painting Lily as a victim. Seeing the situation from her perspective goes a long way. Each act of abuse is framed from the perspective of someone who loves her partner and wants to believe the best in him. Even as the physicality intensifies, Lily’s journey to break the cycle of violence takes the audience along each step away. Her awareness grows as more information is revealed not only to her, but to us.
Lively does what she can to flesh out Lily Bloom but in the first act she isn’t given a lot of depth outside of a killer wardrobe and flower obsession. That changes as Lily’s life grows in complexity and Lively is given heavier material to work with.
The juiciest role by far Baldoni saved for himself. As Ryle, he puts his lethal charm forward aggressively and somehow makes us like this guy we know is trouble for Lily. There’s no hurry to show Ryle’s other side; we’re afforded plenty of time to see how great of a guy he is. That only makes it hit harder when things take a turn for the worse. When it does, Baldoni lays it on thick to ensure that you hate Ryle as much as he deserves. But Ryle isn’t just some bruising bully. He’s a professional, a clean-cut, disarming guy that nobody would ever suspect was a toxic douchebag and an abuser.
Other than Slate who is brilliant, funny, and delivers a heartfelt gut punch in the film’s final moments, the other cast members don’t amount to much. Sklenar is generically nice and dull as Atlas, and I’m sorry but if your name is Atlas you damn well better bring the heat! There’s so much more that could’ve been explored through Morton’s performance as Lily’s mom, but that would’ve pushed the film’s hefty 130-minute runtime.
It’d be a lie to say that It Ends with Us is geared towards yours truly, but it’d be another lie to say I can’t see the appeal. There’s a reason why Hoover’s story, first published in 2016 and pulled from painful memories of her parents’ relationship, is already so well-known and resonant that trailers don’t bother trying to disguise the plot. Lily breaks the mold as a woman who doesn’t waste time trying to fix what’s broken; she takes charge to break the pattern of abuse, not only for her but for her family. A story such as this would’ve played out very differently not too long ago. Ryle would’ve been “misunderstood” and would easily find redemption thanks to the love of a good woman who stuck around. Hoover threw out all of that old nonsense. It’s not reality, even if romance novels and movies tried to convince women otherwise. And while It Ends with Us is lacking in nuance, it delivers a message of bravery and hope in the form its audience will be most receptive to hearing it.
It Ends with Us opens on August 9th.
