Film review: ‘It Ends With Us’ with Blake Lively tackles big questions, but falls into soap opera

Lily Bloom and Ryle Kincaid don’t know each other very well. On a rooftop in Boston, he announces himself by angrily kicking a patio chair. She’s upstairs trying to come to terms with the death of her abusive father. They talk about maraschino cherries, gun violence, and flirting. There is something strange about this pair. But there is also an obvious attraction.

So begins the uneven film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s 2016 bestselling novel “It Ends With Us,” starring Blake Lively, which tries to balance the reality of domestic violence within a romantic comedy and a female empowerment film. Everyone suffers in the process.

It comes very close to melodrama, with suicide, homelessness, generational trauma, child murder, unwanted pregnancy, and never-forgotten love all addressed and only partially digested. Set in Boston, it never takes away from the flavor of that city.

The film centers on Lively’s Lily, a flower shop owner who finds herself in the middle of a complicated love triangle between hunky neurosurgeon Ryle – Justin Baldoni, who also directs – and her hunky high school boyfriend Atlas, played cutely of dog by Brandon Sklenar. .

There are warning signs about Ryle, but they aren’t obvious until they are joined together, which takes, literally, years. We thank the filmmakers for not making the potential attacker so easy to wave a red flag.

The most powerful thing about “It Ends With Us” is the consequences of domestic violence and how it liberates those who witness or survive it. This could have been reinforced or highlighted more. (The ending credits viewers directly to the anti-domestic violence group No more.)

Baldoni perfectly balances threat and seduction, operating in the zone between assertive and psychotic. And his direction is good, with the ability to summarize scenes quickly and move the plot elegantly, although he likes a lot of music-driven montages.

Lively is fine here, getting dangerously close to Manic Pixie Dream Girl with her pretty flower sketches and love of shabby chic, but perks up at the end. She wears a lot of rings and a lot of florals, but she can also wow a room with a cutout dress.

Christy Hall’s script has some terrible problems – “This man goes through women like candy,” someone says at one point – but maneuvers nicely around the book’s odd points, like making Lily’s father’s funeral a flashback instead of a strange rooftop recreation.

But “It Ends With Us” doesn’t end quickly enough — more than a two-hour drag — with tangents and poor editing, like sudden scene cuts that leave viewers searching for clues as to where they are.

And we have so many questions, like how Lively’s character got to the roof of that luxury skyscraper in the first place. And what’s up with Lily’s best friend – Jenny Slate, clearly stealing the movie – who wears Valentino dresses and carries a purse that costs the same as a small car? She clearly doesn’t need a retail job, but works at the flower shop anyway?

And what’s the strange relationship with Carhartt – check out the copycat logo appearing and disappearing from jackets and overalls – apparently trying to portray users as down-to-earth working-class people when they’re not.

The film’s worship of wealth and luxury — from a Mercedes to million-dollar apartments and fancy dinner reservations — I think are attempts to show that domestic violence isn’t confined to sports bars and factories.

The makeup team also put in many hours, transforming Lively, 36, and Brandon Sklenar, 34, into teenagers for flashbacks. How did they do it? Haircuts, eye makeup and lots of Carhartt.

What’s really funny is that Lily clearly has a type: both of her lovers are dark-haired, swarthy guys who prefer tight black t-shirts, are unshaven, and adore her. When they fight – and fight – it’s really hard to tell them apart.

The explosive soundtrack — with Thom Yorke’s “Dawn Chorus,” Lewis Capaldi’s “Love the Hell Out of You” and Brittany Howard’s “I Don’t” represented — has the undeniable presence of Lively’s bestie Taylor Swiftwho lent him “My Tears Ricochet”.

When Lily and Ryle finally hook up for the first time, she warns him, “Don’t let me regret this.” She will, of course. And some others who are part of this film will probably be too.

___

Mark Kennedy is in http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

___

“It Ends With Us,” a Sony Pictures release that hits theaters Friday, is rated PG-13 for “domestic violence, sexual content and strong language.” Running time: 130 minutes. One and a half stars out of four.