By Sandra Hall
IT ENDS WITH US ★★½
(M) 130 minutes
The American novelist Colleen Hoover is a super-charged example of what’s going on in modern publishing. She arrived on The New York Times bestseller list via the internet. Self-published, her first novel was taken up by a blogger, more books followed and she was a great success before commercial publishing caught up with her. Twenty million copies later, Time magazine anointed her as one of the world’s “most influential people”. And it’s all in the name of romance.
Blake Lively plays florist Lily Bloom in It Ends with Us, which is based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Colleen Hoover.
Or is it? It Ends with Us, the first of her novels to become a film, has spawned a controversy questioning that definition. The story’s central love affair is abusive rather than romantic, with critics claiming the abuser is too glamorous a figure to get the message across. Hoover has simply said it’s the most difficult book she has ever written as she was inspired by the relationship between her parents.
There’s certainly no lack of glamour in the film. It’s a soft-focus study in high-end living, starring the lissom Blake Lively as Hoover’s heroine, Lily Bloom, whose name coincidentally reflects her lifelong love of gardens and gardening. She has settled in Boston and is opening a florist shop when she meets a neurosurgeon whose saturnine good looks and buff body go with a volatile temper and indelible scars from a childhood trauma.
Played by the film’s director, Justin Baldoni, he’s called Ryle Kincaid, a name that sounds – even to Lily – as if it’s been plucked straight from a Mills & Boon title about the impact of a preening alpha male on a susceptible heart.
Justin Baldoni (left) plays the abusive love interest of Blake Lively’s character in It Ends with Us, which has been criticised for romancing domestic violence.
Most of the time, however, the temper is camouflaged by charm and Lily falls for him, failing to spot the danger signs until an hour into the action, which is packed with erotic cliches overlaid with a rolling soundtrack of pop hits that includes songs by Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey. The multiple montages at least cut down on the dialogue, which is risible, and there is room for flashbacks to Lily’s adolescence that tell us she often witnessed her mother being physically abused by her father.
The trouble really starts when her first love, Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), reappears, provoking Ryle to fly into a series of jealous rages. These are immediately followed by expressions of remorse that Lily finds so convincing that she eventually agrees to marry him, with predictable results.
Plausible? I guess you could say so, given the fact domestic abuse can take place in any household, perpetrated by men who are regarded by others as perfectly decent human beings. But with this story, the filmmakers postpone the bad news until they have milked the romantic possibilities of Lily and Ryle’s relationship for all their worth.
The film’s release has revived a game that sprung up among Hoover readers when the novel was taken up by TikTokkers in 2021. Fans are declaring themselves for Team Ryle or Team Atlas. And, sad to report, the vote has not been unanimous.
It Ends with Us is released in cinemas on August 8.
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