Review: It ends with us, we can’t turn trauma into drama

A movie or book can tackle a serious, emotionally painful subject and still be something you can’t help but laugh at, a dramatic pileup that leaves you muttering, “Oh, come on!” quietly. End with us, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s fiercely popular 2016 novel, works hard to get all the appropriate notes. After all, this is a story of domestic violence, a more widely shared real-life experience than most of us want to face. (Hoover said the book was inspired by her mother, who was physically abused by Hoover’s father.) And the objective reality is that we to need movies like End with us. The classic genre known as the chick flick – films like King Vidor, 1937 Stella Dallas, or any version of Imitation of life, filmed first by John Stahl in 1934 and later, in 1959, by Douglas Sirk – thrived in the ’30s, ’40s and beyond, creating a safe space for emotional catharsis. Women, and sometimes men, often need to cry it out, and aren’t movies – a refuge in the dark – the perfect place to do that?

But End with us-directed by Justin Baldoni, who also co-stars – doesn’t have the courage to get the waterworks pumping, not even in a gentle, reserved way. Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom, a thoughtful young woman with a hippie patchwork wardrobe and a cautiously bright outlook on life. She lives in Boston; She is about to open her own flower shop, the realization of a lifelong dream. In every sense, this is a period of transition. Her father has just died and she’s not sure what to do with her mixed feelings; As we learn more about how he abused Lily’s mother and others, we understand why. Lily had just returned from the funeral, held in her hometown in Maine, and with her thoughts in disarray, she fled to a Boston rooftop with a dreamy view. But she doesn’t actually live in the building. And when a handsome neurosurgeon, who It is a resident arrives on the roof, you get the feeling her life will change forever.

His name is Ryle Kincaid – he’s played by Baldoni – and he’s almost criminally handsome, with his sympathetic dark eyes and 10 o’clock shadow, even sexier than the 5 o’clock type. He just has to be a wolf in wolf’s clothing, and in the first few minutes of the date, it sure seems that way. The two find themselves engaged in the kind of surprisingly frank conversations that can often arise between strangers. He had a terrible day; she just lost her father, a man she loved, even though he didn’t deserve it. Ryle hears her, but also tells her, “I want to have sex with you,” clearly impressed by her haute-hippie-girl joy, which shines even amid her conflicted pain. And although she rightly calls him out on her perhaps overly direct sales pitch, they almost sleep together – until he is called into work. Because a beautiful neurosurgeon’s work is never done.

Lily thinks that’s all. A day or so later, she receives the keys to her new store and begins to spruce it up, hiring a helper and making a new friend that same day: the rich lady Allysa (the always wonderful Jenny Slate, who gives a little life to her). the film whenever she’s on screen) just appears. She wants a job; Trusting her instincts, Lily gives her one. The two become fast friends. And guess what? It turns out that the semi-creepy Dr. McDreamy, aka Ryle, is Allysa’s son brother. What are the hypotheses?

Although Allysa offers some subtle warnings about Ryle’s romantic history, he and Lily fall in love anyway. Of course, he’s a player. But he makes it clear that he wants to try a real relationship with Lily. She goes ahead – and then a love from her teenage years, who we already know about in flashbacks, unexpectedly enters the picture. Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar) is now a handsome but down-to-earth restaurant owner from Boston, and when Lily sees him, we can see there’s still a spark between the two. But Lily has already earned Ryle’s trust; she decides to stay the course.

Up to this point, End with us it could be your classic romantic melodrama, but not too heavy, filled with hot but tender sex and traces of romantic confusion. But if you’ve read Hoover’s book, you know what’s coming. Lily herself becomes a victim of domestic violence, and it doesn’t come with loud warning signs. In fact, the first time Lily is injured, resulting in a bruised eye that she tries to hide with makeup, the event is presented as an accident triggered by a fight over removing a burnt fry from the oven. This could happen to anyone. But the second incident is clearer and the third is unmistakably violent. Still, you look at Ryle, as Lily seems to, as possibly fixable. He is suffering; His inner turmoil is causing him to act out. The film is accurate and effective in this sense: for so many abused women, you never know how bad it can get, until it does. really bad.

However, none of this is enough to make you fully buy into what the film is selling. Lively has been great in other films: her turn in 2016’s Woman vs. Shark thriller The Shallows was one of the scream queen’s greatest performances of the last decade, and she showed a nervous gravitas in the Ben Affleck film The city. But End with us disappoints her. The men, with their flaws – even the gentle, robust Atlas has a very short fuse, a yellow if not red flag – are far more interesting than Lily. This does not give them the right to inflict violence; but from a dramatic standpoint, it certainly makes them more electric. As Lively plays her, Lily is an empty, glassy surface, the better to reflect the shortcomings of the men around her; This is not the same as being a person. Even at the end of the film, she still feels like a mute stranger – it’s the men who seem as alive, as dangerous as one of them can be.

The problem, perhaps, is that End with us It’s all about what it’s about and nothing more. These characters exist to highlight the insidiousness of domestic violence, the way its effects can emerge invisibly, even when those who suffer hide in protective denial. Admittedly, this is a lot for one film to carry. But films cannot just be efficient systems for transmitting feelings; they have to work on us in more subtle ways. End with us makes all its points, all right, but in a way that’s more uplifting than moving. And despite the beauty of Boston’s setting, it’s not as visually appealing as it should be. On the one hand, this is a film about a flower-loving florist who is embarrassingly low on flowers, save for a few droopy, half-dead Victorian-looking things. It’s okay, even in a story that deals with a traumatic subject, to add a little color here and there. Flowers, despite their ephemeral beauty, can often brighten even the gloomiest day. In this film, they are treated as something we don’t deserve, a tightly sealed blessing, rather than something worth living for.