PG-13 | 2h 10m | Drama, Melodrama, Romance | August 9, 2024
“It Ends With Us” should have been a grittier, poignant accounting of domestic abuse and intergenerational trauma, but suffers from a Hallmark treatment. It’s mostly engrossing though.
Lead actor Justin Baldoni doubles as director, and his co-star, the luminous Blake Lively, playing lead character Lily Bloom, would appear to be nowhere near plateauing in her long-lived and long-legged loveliness, career and otherwise.
Meet-Awkward
One night, shop owner Lily and surgeon Ryle meet awkwardly on the rooftop of the apartment building they both live in. He, being the aggressive and ripped neurosurgeon that he is, almost sweeps her off her feet right there on the rooftop. But, since he’s on call, he has to go back to work. But a blink-and-you'll-miss-it red flag has been revealed.
Their romance, er, blossoms, along with Lily’s blooming flower shop (Lily’s only recently arrived in Boston). I keep wanting to say, “And just like that” because the whole thing has a strong “Sex In The City” vibe. And just like that, Lily’s got a brand-new bestie, Allysa (Jenny Slate) whom she hires on the spot. Turns out, Allysa knows people Lily knows.
Flashbacks
We toggle between Lily-now and Lily-then, and find that Lily’s got some violent skeletons in her closet, but they don’t haunt anyone but her. Teenage Lily (Isabela Ferrer, who’s a dead ringer for Lively, especially when she smiles) helps out a school busmate named Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter), whom she spies squatting in a boarded-up building across the street from her home.Atlas’s mother kicked him out due to the fact that all of her boyfriends beat her senseless, and he tends to intervene. Lily gives Atlas her dad’s clothes, some food, and when Lily’s dad eventually finds out about Atlas, things do not end well. And off goes Atlas to the Marines for at least eight years.
Back to the future: Abusive behaviors and patterns start to surface between the comely shop owner and the ripped surgeon. One night, dining at a cozy upscale restaurant, who should reappear in her life, to take her dinner order—than Lily’s first love. Atlas (older version played by Brandon Sklenar) simultaneously observes a small cut below Lily’s eye, and bandaged knuckles on Lily’s new boyfriend’s right hand. Do you imagine there will be fisticuffs?
What’s Missing
As you can surmise, there’s kicking, punching, throttling, and shoving people down staircases happening every which way around here, but we only glimpse a tiny fraction of it. “It Ends With Us” has too much flower shop prattle, Lily’s fussing mom (Amy Morton), fun with karaoke, many beer toasts, cooing over baby bumps, and not enough black eyes, bloody noses, and fingerprints on necks.Lively digs deep but isn’t given much to work with; her trauma is so minimal, it doesn’t allow Lively to register much more than mild bewilderment. Which is a shame, because Lively commands a wide range of acting skills and portrays pain extremely well—just take a gander at her dealing with great white shark abuse in “The Shallows.”
One Among Many
A quick Google search turns up 23 movies about domestic violence, such as “Enough” (2002), “What’s Love Got to Do With It” (1993), “The Color Purple” (1985), “The Burning Bed” (1984), “Fried Green Tomatoes” (1991), “Sleeping With the Enemy” (1991), and “I, Tonya” (2017). Do we really need another one? Of course—the problem is not going away any time soon.
