It Ends With Us review – strug­gles to grap­ple with its heavy themes

Justin Baldoni’s It Ends with Us is the new, A‑list crown in author Colleen Hoover’s romance nov­el empire. Adapt­ed from her phe­nom­e­nal­ly suc­cess­ful book of the same name, the movie is pro­duced by Blake Live­ly who also stars as Lily Blos­som Bloom, who falls for the tall, dark and hand­some Ryle (Bal­doni, dou­bling as direc­tor and actor), all the while recon­nect­ing with her first love, peren­ni­al good guy Atlas (Bran­don Sklenar).

It Ends With Us is the most suc­cess­ful of Hoover’s books, but all of her sto­ries are bound by sim­i­lar­ly vague titles, colour­ful­ly non­de­script cov­ers and fea­ture char­ac­ters with names like ​“Clay­ton” and ​“Rylee” and ​“Chastin”. They have also all rock­et­ed to the New York Times best­seller list, prov­ing that Hoover has fas­ci­nat­ing stay­ing pow­er. For my own part, I have seen her books strewn across Insta­gram sto­ries and Tik­Tok videos, notable as the hol­i­day reads from the friend of a friend of some­one I knew from sec­ondary school. Per­haps unfair­ly, these books have come to act as short­hand for a cer­tain kind of female read­er. To put it in brash, inter­net terms: Colleen Hoover is Sal­ly Rooney for peo­ple whose Girls is Friends.

Ryle and Atlas’ bad-boy-ver­sus-good-guy dichoto­my is upend­ed by the thread of domes­tic abuse which runs, ugly and unavoid­able, through Lily’s life, start­ing in flash­backs with her abu­sive father (Kevin McK­idd) and reemerg­ing with hor­ri­ble clar­i­ty upon Ryle’s intro­duc­tion. Sud­den­ly mon­tages of Lily and Ryle’s smi­ley close­ups are replaced with long, tense dia­logue, cul­mi­nat­ing in blur­ry fights. Func­tion­al­ly, this could serve to illu­mi­nate some­thing fun­da­men­tal about abuse, which sim­mers beneath moments of gen­uine con­nec­tion sound­tracked by well-known pop music. But this is actu­al­ly part of the film’s fail­ure, which strug­gles to bal­ance the light­ness of romance and the deprav­i­ty of vio­lent rela­tion­ships. It is a conun­drum sum­marised per­fect­ly in Eric Daman’s wacky cos­tume design, which attempts to merge high (a spark­ly ball­go­wn) and low (an over­sized cam­ou­flage jack­et) ele­ments with unde­served aplomb. The result is a visu­al headache, over­crowd­ing every frame with colour, tex­ture and pat­terns, rather than build­ing to some care­ful­ly orches­trat­ed tension.

Sup­port­ing sur­vivors of domes­tic abuse is an easy cause to cham­pi­on, and as such feels delib­er­ate­ly depoliti­cised in art. When Lily reflects on her rela­tion­ship with Ryle late in the film, it is old scenes cut togeth­er from a new angle, expos­ing his oth­er­wise hid­den anger slowed down and close-up. The film argues that his exploita­tive nature was always there and Lily had avoid­ed it, but abuse is slip­perier in real life – lying dor­mant for some and hideous­ly appar­ent to oth­ers. Were Bal­doni, or indeed Hoover, more will­ing to invest in the com­mu­ni­ty of char­ac­ters around Lily, Ryle’s abuse could rip­ple across her friends and cowork­ers reveal­ing itself more hon­est­ly and organ­i­cal­ly in ways that remain untrans­lat­able to Lily until the break­ing point.

The best scene in the film is between Lily and her best friend Allysa (Jen­ny Slate, who sports some of the film’s more brain-bend­ing out­fits) when the for­mer final­ly reveals her now-husband’s abuse. Both actress­es are locked into a com­pelling chem­istry, removed from the rest of the film’s more cliched beats. It’s a nice scene, cap­tured sim­ply in shot-reverse-shot, but con­firms that the cou­ples in Hoover’s world fail to pro­pel her love sto­ries fur­ther, and that the foun­da­tions of these romances are shaky at best.

Lit­tle White Lies is com­mit­ted to cham­pi­oning great movies and the tal­ent­ed peo­ple who make them.

By becom­ing a mem­ber you can sup­port our inde­pen­dent jour­nal­ism and receive exclu­sive essays, prints, week­ly film rec­om­men­da­tions and more.