Infuriating It Ends with Us is a Manipulative Exercise in Trauma Exploitation
It’s not often a motion picture makes me physically ill. All art is a subjective, personal experience, so it’s bound to happen every now and then. Literature, music, television, painting, sculpture, whatever — there will come a point where something hits you the wrong way. It’s just how it goes.
There is a moment in the Blake Lively domestic abuse melodrama It Ends with Us (an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s massively popular novel) when I wanted to throw things at the screen. This is a shame, because, at least initially, this tale of young Bostonian florist Lily Blossom Bloom (Lively) starting her own business while falling in love with a handsome neurosurgeon is pleasant enough. It’s well acted, features a sublime supporting turn from Jenny Slate (who, after Obvious Child and Landline, truly should be a bigger star), and is confidently directed by Justin Baldoni (who pulls double duty by also portraying the object of Lily’s affections, the sexy Dr. Ryle Kincaid).
It’s no secret the turn Lily’s tale is going take, as that’s exceedingly well telegraphed within the first few minutes. As a teenager (Isabela Ferrer), she was a domestic abuse survivor who watched her mother Jenny (Amy Morton) cower and struggle under her belligerent father Andrew (Kevin McKidd), an otherwise well-respected member of their small suburban community. To hammer the point home even further, Lily befriends the bedraggled runaway Atlas (Alex Neustaedter), whose mother kicked him out after he tried to stop one of her boyfriends from repeatedly beating her up.
That an adult Lily would suddenly find herself facing a similar situation isn’t shocking. This isn’t a spoiler. The mystery is in how the character will deal with it, how it will be depicted, and in what manner the film will attempt to (one would hope) thoughtfully explore the topic while still entertaining an audience. That it fails miserably on all counts once Lily realizes the truth of what is happening to her is the surprise, and it’s understandably not a good one. This is also the aforementioned moment where everything catastrophically falls apart.
Having not read Hoover’s book, I do not know if the failure lies with her prose, the screenplay written by Daddio filmmaker Christy Hall, or Baldoni’s direction, but I imagine it is a combination of all three. Once the abuse angle becomes concrete, this transition is handled with zero subtlety and even less grace. I found the whole thing to be painful and exploitative, but not in an edifying or moving way. It showcases horrific depictions of trauma — both physical and psychological — but doesn’t attempt to deliver anything more than simplistically empty platitudes. This made my skin crawl.
Look, I know how problematic material can make someone feel seen and how it can help them heal. Sleepaway Camp, The Silence of Lambs, and Boys Don’t Cry are essential facets of my being. I honestly do not know if I’d have been able to finally embrace who I am and live an authentic life had I not watched all three when I did. If reading Hoover’s best-seller or watching this adaptation does something similar for someone else, that’s great. I am beyond happy for them.
For me, however, the fundamental difference is that I found everything that happens to Lily exasperatingly manipulative and didactically facile. I didn’t like how it embraced noxious stereotypes, and I felt like the film romanticized her suffering to an aggressively insulting degree. Its continuing superficiality struck me as repulsive, as was the almost fairy-tale simplicity of the conclusion. There was no truth here, just purposeful misdirection that minimized Lily’s experiences to the point I was angry I’d let myself get emotionally invested in her journey early on. Heck, there was even a “white savior” aspect that was like putrefied icing on an inedible cake.
Lively gives it her all, and while she’s debatably miscast, the actor still does a fine job of holding things together, even when they become unintentionally laughable. Brandon Sklenar shows up at the midpoint as the adult Atlas, and he valiantly makes the most of a thinly written character who would fit better in a dopey Lifetime holiday time-waster (or a 1980s Harlequin romance novel). Baldoni is also quite good as Ryle, but since I loathed how the character was constructed and presented, I still can’t say his performance did much more than turn my stomach (and not in the way I’m guessing was the intent). Slate, however, is excellent, and she’s the only one who manages to make the more sickening moments of dialogue and exposition even moderately palatable.
Not that I think any of this makes the film worthwhile. No matter how well intentioned its core ideas might be, and as competent a production as it is (in the acting, directing, and technical aspects), by the time the story had ended, I could have cared less. I left the theater angry. I only got more upset in the time it took me to walk home. I’m still incensed as I sit here now. To put it bluntly, It Ends with Us was not for me, and my only future memories of watching it will be those of overwhelming disgust.
– Review reprinted courtesy of the SGN in Seattle
Film Rating: 1 (out of 4)
