Directed By Justin Baldoni

Starring – Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni, Brandon Sklenar

The Plot – Tells the compelling story of Lily Bloom (Lively), a woman who overcomes a traumatic childhood to embark on a new life in Boston and chase a lifelong dream of opening her own business. A chance meeting with charming neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni) sparks an intense connection, but as the two fall deeply in love, Lily begins to see sides of Ryle that remind her of her parents’ relationship. When Lily’s first love, Atlas Corrigan (Sklenar), suddenly reenters her life, her relationship with Ryle is upended, and Lily realizes she must learn to rely on her own strength to make an impossible choice for her future

Rated PG-13 for domestic violence, sexual content and some strong adult language.

IT ENDS WITH US – Official Trailer (HD) (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Between romantic movies often being my least favorite genre and having no experience whatsoever with the book that this movie is adapting, I had quite an uphill climb with ‘It Ends with Us’, but to my surprise the film is an eye-opening experience, primarily in the vital urgency and awareness that it supplants to spousal abuse, which unfortunately so many of its audience will relate to. Baldoni, while pitching double duty, does a remarkable job of highlighting the vulnerability and frailty that comes with women having their lives completely turned upside down, all the while imbedding some legitimate surprises with the production that only enhanced the immersive feeling of dread and despair that plagued Lily after the initial physical confrontation. Similar to how Stockholm Syndrome victims look to override the realities of what they experienced, the movie’s editing is intentionally choppy at moments during physicality, leaving audiences to wonder if in fact Ryle legitimately did what we think he did, or if it’s all gaslighting to Lily’s withering mentality with her own tragic past as a victim of her abusive father. It’s a nice touch that not only blurs the lines of reality, but also keeps the film and its imagery from ever feeling exploitative of the same kind of tender feelings that victims experience, with an aftershock kind of captivity to the depiction that often shows us the effects long before the causes that fright and paralyze. In addition to the editing, the script mostly enhances more than it disappoints, with a self-awareness to other books and films of the genre that it uses to dispense hilarity, whether for how silly their character names are, or how big and important their careers are. It’s not exactly free of the critique itself, as Lily Bloom and Atlas Corrigan are two of the most ridiculous character names that I’ve ever heard in my life, but I appreciate a film that isn’t afraid of poking fun at itself to produce levity as a calm before the eventual storm, resulting in the tip of the iceberg to getting to know these characters, which the script also takes ample time fleshing out. Considering this is a two hour movie, I’m astonished that screenwriter Christy Hall uses the entire opening hour to live and breathe within two various timelines in the life of Lily, all in order to contextualize the ideals of lust versus love, and how they’re much easier to decipher from outside vantage points. It helps to humanize these characters in ways that I’m not typically used to in romantic drama’s, which made it easier to want to follow the highs and lows of the arcs, despite me having absolutely no relatability to them at all. The script also dives deep into the psychosis of a child victim, and the fear that comes with falling in love with the same kind of person who they once escaped, with the objective of love feeling like such a slippery slope for people introduced to its darkest side at such an early age. In showing us all of Ryle’s charms, at least initially, it forces audiences to endure the same kind of feelings that Lily herself experiences in opening up to him, and though we know and understand the betrayal is coming, the hardest pill to swallow is in fact the pain of her own inability to escape this torturous prison, where long after her father is gone, his memory and the effects that he’s had on her still materialize in the least expected of circumstances, which she attempts to avoid and justify in the fear that this traumatic encompassing has materialized in another area of her life. Much respect in attained humanity also goes to the depth of the performances, with every single member of the ensemble, and even casting perfectly plucked for the movie’s immense success. One of my biggest issues with films depicting multiple timelines, children and adults, is that casting agents often cast a youthful actor or actress who looks and sounds nothing like the elder actor who they’re mirroring, but that isn’t the case here, as Isabela Ferrer perfectly looks and sounds like Blake Lively, right down to nuances in facial ticks and emotional responses, making it easier to read and interpret them as one cohesive presence, especially since the opening act is used to flashback so frequently. As for adults, Lively is so much more than a pretty face, as the warmth and charisma that she lends to Lily eventually gets sacrificed for overwhelming fear that culminates during one specific gut-wrenching sequence, marrying the sides of her respective demeanors in a humbling transformation that so effortlessly stole my heart. Likewise, Baldoni and Sklenar vividly convey the evidential differences between their characters and just what they see and want out of Lily, but Baldoni tenderly walks a line as an abusing captor that could easily come across as over-the-top and cartoonish, but instead brandishes charm and suave sophistication to get his foot in the door, before unlocking an underlining inferiority and jealousy that he uses to take the character down some dark corridors. Baldoni is wise enough to let his leading lady take most of the shine, but an on-screen victim is only triumphant with a detestable captor, and together the two ride the waves of a relationship based initially on lust, which is always doomed to fail.

NEGATIVES

Though ‘It Ends with Us’ and specifically Baldoni do everything to avoid typical tropes and cliches that historically resonate within these kinds of movies, their execution isn’t entirely flawless, especially with meandering melodrama and horrendous lines of dialogue that made me cringe, especially during initial character introductions. Some people could incorrectly label this as a means of further poking fun at the genre, but the lines themselves continue long after the characters quite literally pull the magnifying glass on aspects of characterization that are downright silly, and it cut into the mesmerizing momentum of the chemistry between two particular characters, whenever they rely on one of these cheese cubes to bring them closer, leaving me plagued by laughter during unintentional instances that took a bit of the flame from the romantic fire. As for the melodramatic parts, it’s not all a tonal mess, as sequences with low volume controls on the music score, which allow the actors to do all of the heavy lifting, are quite effective in ratcheting up the tension and helplessness towards Lily that Baldoni elicits with claustrophobic camera angles, but at its worse, the film leans too heavily on swelling tones and shouting dialogue to attain emphasis in the way its characters are feeling, and it made this tense romantic drama sink to soap opera depths of the sea, where desperation plunged the depiction a bit further than needed or necessary. It’s also a very predictable film, despite me having no knowledge at all about where the story or its characters were headed, which makes the book for outsiders like me all the more unnecessary when we already know and expect what’s coming. If the script deviated even temporarily in the molds of Ryle being bad, and Atlas being good, then it could’ve crafted an even more uncertain element to the tug-of-war between them, but it never truly feels like Ryle has succeeded Lily’s feelings for Atlas, despite him being in a relationship with her for a majority of the movie, so I found myself just waiting until reality eventually set in, which it did with little to no deviation from what I read about the book’s summary, minutes after finishing the film. Finally, my last critique is more of confusion for the future of this franchise, as there are currently two books in this series, but this film definitely feels like a fully-fledged finality with where the journey eventually ends. I guess it’s possible that you could do a second film if the numbers are certainly there on opening weekend, but I wish the script would’ve left certain things unresolved, as failing to do so feels like they had no faith in a second film getting greenlit, which is a shame considering I would definitely prefer another film of this to four films of the ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ universe, or the five films of the ‘After’ universe, which I have since sought counseling for. If there is a second film, it would almost feel superfluous to its selling point, especially with nothing of foreboding tension to hang in the air of its atmosphere, so a one and done film feels right in this particular instance.

OVERALL
‘It Ends with Us’ does commit some of the genre-plagued tropes that it delightfully scoffs at, but it’s still a gripping and honest portrayal of abuse, led effectively by the soulful performances of Lively and Baldoni, who ride the waves of a deteriorating relationship based on an artificial foundation. With experimental beats towards its editing and camera work, the film is among the closest that I’ve seen to pitting audiences in the shoes of its tortured and unsuspecting victim, often settling for naturalistic depiction over melodramatics, which constantly keeps its heart in the right place.

My Grade: 7/10 or C+