(This blog contains a plot spoiler)
I hate it when blogs are hard to write because it’s not clearly a ‘yes this is great you should see it’ or ‘this is terrible and you definitely should not see it’. WOE IS ME!
And so it is with ‘It ends with us’, an adaptation of a New York Times bestselling romance novel by Colleen Hoover with Blake Lively in the lead role of Lily Bloom. (Her middle name is Blossom and she’s a florist, to give you a sense of where this is going.)
I saw this film a few days ago and even with all that time to digest it, the honest truth is that I’m still not quite sure what to make of it. Did I love it? Absolutely not. Did I hate it? I hated many parts of it but I did not hate the overall experience of watching it.
I think one of the reasons I’m so vexed about it is that it feels wildly inappropriate to ‘cut to the chase’ about a film whose theme is domestic violence. Spoiler alert. I’m usually really anti putting spoilers in my blogs but it’s so central to the film it’s impossible to ignore. And I guess there’s the rub - this is marketed as a romance film but then the family violence emerges and suddenly it feels kinda gross to be jovial about it. And to say this is a Hollywood glossy version of domestic violence portrayal would be an understatement. The perpetrator really does not come off looking that bad and I’m not cool with that. Broadly it seems to me that this is a deeply unrealistic portrayal of family violence, even acknowledging that everyone’s experience is different.
I won’t go into the plotline - I didn’t know anything when I saw it and I think that definitely helped keep me engaged - but suffice to say if something related to family violence would be upsetting to you, you should give this a wide berth. Aside from any other way it could make you feel, I reckon it’ll make you mad how family violence is portrayed. There’s also just a whole bunch of things about the storyline that are dumb and unrealistic and have complete soap opera vibes.
So apologies this blog lacks eloquence and clarity but in summary, I guess I wouldn’t recommend seeing this film. Maybe catch it on a streamer when it pops up there. I mean, if only for Blake Lively’s spectacular hair which deserved it’s own notation in the credits.
‘It ends with us’ is in cinemas now, rated M and runs 130 minutes.
POST SCRIPT ADDED THREE HOURS AFTER PUBLISHING - I’m delighted someone in my professional network shared this ABC article on LinkedIn about the problematic way this film romanticizes violent relationships. It articulates the notions I grappled with 1000 times better than I have and I highly recommend you read it particularly if you are considering seeing the film.