It Ends With Us

Director: Justin Baldoni
Starring: Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni and Brandon Sklenar
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 130 mins. Reviewed in Aug 2024
Reviewer: Peter W Sheehan

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Rating notes: Family violence and references to sexual violence

This American film tells the story of a young woman with a traumatic childhood, who falls in love with a man, who develops abusive patterns of behaviour.
A young man, Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) meets Lily Bloom (Lively) one night on a rooftop building in Boston, US. Lily, a college graduate, and Ryle, a neurosurgeon, are immediately attracted to each other.
After a few encounters, Ryle and Lily declare their love for each other. Their initially happy romance suddenly takes a turn for the worse when Ryle becomes abusive. Lily is a woman who has had to overcome a traumatic childhood that has been filled with child abuse by an abusive father, who now has passed away.
The film is based on a best-selling 2016 novel by Colleen Hoover. While the two main characters are older in the film adaptation, the thrust of the story remains the same. The romantic attachment between Lily and Ryle becomes a turbulent relationship in both book and film. In the film, Lively and Baldoni, give a slightly different interpretation of their characters. The film is directed by Baldoni.
The film unwittingly normalises sexual abuse. In the movie, Ryle is painted as an imperfect character whose aggression is portrayed as passion fanned by pathological jealousy, rather than oppression. Lily is portrayed as a person who believes her abuser may change his behaviour, because she believes he is ultimately redeemable. While such depictions may have some psychological validity when there is independent evidence that abusive patterns of behaviour will change, the film arguably has negative consequences, for viewers who are impressionable.
Ryle is at times painted by the film as a misunderstood person, instead of being a violent abuser. Even though the relationship ends and Lily exits from it, the film essentially glamorises a problematic relationship in which Ryle is a lover, who could have romanced Lily in an ‘exciting’ way if Lily had accepted him.
This is a provocative film that basically misrepresents the complicated and harmful consequences of abusive relationships, and it frequently paints Ryle as ‘appealingly’ dark. Lily finally rejects Ryle, but is clearly left bearing the cost.