It Ends with Us

Not since Don’t Worry Darling has the behaviour of the talent promoting a film been subject to this much gossip, as It Ends with Us currently invites. While director and male lead Justin Baldoni (Jane the Virgin) does solo interviews advocating for survivors of intimate partner violence (a main topic of the feature), his co-star Blake Lively and the rest of the cast seem to be plugging a buoyant romantic comedy. Upon first glance, this gives off the appearance of two divorced camps drumming up business for separate films, but the disconnect between the Colleen Hoover adaptation’s light tone and the gravity of the depicted situation is not confined to the advertisement.

Shortly after her father’s (Kevin McKidd) funeral, Lily Blossom Bloom (Lively) opens a flower shop in Boston and meets handsome surgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni). He courts her with grand romantic gestures but he is impulsive, and his jealous side gets the better of him when he finds out what role Lily’s first love Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) still plays in her life.

The to and fro between the kitschy romance elements (complete with sickeningly overstated floral themes and a hyper-feminine voluminous wig for Lively), and the darkness of the floating key topic that is pussyfooted around for far too long makes It Ends with Us feel like the condensed version of a soap opera. With its intent to wallow in nebulosity and cut around certain scenes in order to gear up for a montage, where the crucial situations are edited together differently in order to function as a “big reveal”, the film inadvertently trivialises domestic abuse before sensationalising it.

There are two distinct and very potent scenes that finally strike a chord with those who love the novel the movie is based on, as well as leave an impact on the unfamiliar audience. The trenchant direction of individual moments like these convey the impression that the film’s seams fell apart in its final cut, rather than the production process.

With Baldoni’s efforts slightly exceeding those of his castmates, the performances are all expedient. On the downside, Jenny Slate’s humouristic bits fail to ignite the necessary spark to provide the desired comic relief of the majority of her entrances and McKidd’s chops are tragically wasted on mere fractions of flashback sequences.

While It Ends with Us will attract fans of both young adult novels and chick flicks, the feature has little to offer in terms of giving voice to the themes it sets out to shed light on, rendering it dispensable.

Selina Sondermann

It Ends with Us is released nationwide on 9^th August 2024.

Watch the trailer for It Ends with Us here: