It Ends With Us is a Runaway Success. But Does it Help Domestic Violence Awareness?
The new adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestseller is having a surprising viral moment. We explore whether the film’s glossy looks are good for its serious message.
good.film
7 months ago
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There’s a fascinating double act happening at the box office right now. No, not the one between Deadpool and Wolverine… it’s actually between Deadpool and his OTHER life partner. After smashing the box office apart, Ryan Reynolds is now watching his real-life wife Blake Lively have her turn, as her book-to-screen adaptation of It Ends With Us raked in $180 million worldwide after just NINE days.
Hmmm, an adults-only superhero comedy playing alongside a soapy romantic drama… Perfect counter-programming? You bet. But there’s a lot more going on here than good timing. It’s clear that there’s an enormous audience appetite for thoughtful female-led rom-drams, and it’s a desire that Blake Lively savvily tapped into when she took a producing punt on adapting Colleen Hoover’s award-winning, New York Times #1 bestseller for the big screen.
It Ends With Us has already provoked a few controversies, though. The core of the film revolves around domestic violence, but the film’s marketing – featuring floral motifs and a glossy, dramatic love triangle – is leaning away. A TikTok trend encouraging movie audiences to “Grab Your Friends, Wear Your Florals!” racked up over 100 million views. But DV awareness advocates argue that disguising a domestic violence story in pretty colours, for audiences who might not be aware of the story, is inappropriate, confronting, and at worst, deeply triggering.
With a Royal Commission into Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence currently underway in Australia (along with a giant federal advertising campaign focused on consent and respectful relationships), It Ends With Us arrives in the mainstream at a key moment. We checked out the film to see whether it shoulders its responsibility to tell a domestic violence story with care – or if it squanders its soapbox.
What is It Ends with Us about?
Utilising a flashback structure (but mostly set in the present), It Ends With Us tells the story of Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), a woman who’s determined to break free of her traumatic past, but finds herself falling into the same patterns she grew up with. On the verge of setting up her own business in Boston, she meets a man who looks like he stepped right out of a telenovela… trailing a few red flags along the way.
He’s charming. He’s brooding. He’s literally a children’s brain surgeon. Thankfully, It Ends With Us has enough self-awareness for Lily to burst out laughing when Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) tells her what he does for a living. “I thought you were a crypto bro!”, she snorts. And don’t worry, she ALSO knows how cringey it sounds that a girl named “Lily Bloom” has always dreamed of opening her own – wait for it – flower shop.
Sounds like a daytime soapie? Hey, you’re not wrong (Ryle even admits he looks like someone from General Hospital). These small acknowledgments keep the film on our good side. Lively and Baldoni are a natural match with great chemistry, and because they play their parts with genuine warmth, we buy the slight narrative silliness – and sink into their intense connection.
But as Lily and Ryle fall deeper in love, she begins to see glimpses of Ryle that remind her of her own parents’ abusive relationship. Or is she imagining things? We’re kept in a state of flux about that as the film plays out (it’s no coincidence that our “unsureness” echoes the state in which someone in a gaslit or violent relationship is deliberately kept by their abuser).
It Ends With Us culminates in what feels like an impossible choice, but it’s one that countless women face every day: stay or leave? Along the way, the film poses questions around the balance between chemistry and consent, and how generational trauma can feel inescapable. There’s a strong sense, though, that It Ends With Us wants to help provide the power to make that escape. As the film’s poster states: “We break the pattern, or the pattern breaks us.”
How does It Ends with Us show us examples of coercive control and red flags?
If actor & director Justin Baldoni is reading this, please know we mean this as a compliment: he’s cast himself perfectly as a charming, yet threatening love interest. Lily first meets his character, Ryle, when he bursts onto a rooftop and violently kicks a chair over. It’s an instant red flag, but it fades when Ryle explains that he lost a young patient that night. And so the pattern is set: an alarming action, followed by a justification, followed by acceptance.
Another note that’s subtly inserted is when Ryle asks Lily (nicely) if she’d move from where she’s casually sitting: near the edge of the rooftop. She says she's good where she is, but Ryle asks her again more firmly. It’s the first hint of his style of coercive control – where perpetrators use patterns of abusive behaviours in a way that creates fear and denies autonomy (it’s important to note that this behaviour can be physical, non-physical, or a combination of both).
The pair quickly bond on the rooftop: first over their grief (for Ryle, his patient; for Lily, a family member), then over jokes about their names, their careers and their looks. “How many women has this worked on?” Lily asks, after a particularly salacious line from Ryle. His answer is turbocharged with confidence: “All of them.” Admittedly, it’s a pretty steamy scene – but the lingering memory of that violent kick runs below it all like a dark undercurrent.
“While on the one hand, we were making a movie about ending a cycle of abuse, on the other hand, we were making a movie about love. We had to honour that paradox.”
~ Producer Jamey Heath
Through the film’s first act, Ryle rides an absolute knife's edge between chivalry and pressure; sexiness and oiliness. He offers to walk Lily home – but when she says she’s fine to walk alone, he insists (“It's on the way”). Later, during a flirtatiously jealous conversation, Lily tells him directly, "You have to stop this, please” which Ryle interrupts with “Can you just SHUT UP for one second?” Oof.
There’s other examples which all build to create a push-pull atmosphere over the first act. Our radar is on red alert about this man – but he manages, quite naturally, to defuse Lily’s doubts and write off what he said or did every time. It’s because he was stressed. It’s because he was startled. It’s because he’s in love. It's a surprisingly nuanced examination of when “being wooed” feels exciting, versus when that chase becomes threatening because he won’t listen to “no” or “stop.”
How does It Ends with Us explore the cycle of trauma?
It’s appropriate that It Ends With Us begins with a funeral. It’s for Lily’s father – obviously a traumatic loss. But when Lily walks out on giving her eulogy without saying a word, there’s clearly more going on than just love and grief. What was her past relationship like with her father – and how does it affect her now? (Heads up: light spoilers follow in this section!)
As we mentioned up top, a fair chunk of It Ends With Us uses flashbacks which fill in our understanding just when we need it (shoutout to the highly effective editing by Oona Flaherty & Robb Sullivan). So we’re slowly brought to awareness with a string of scenes featuring Lily as a 17 year old, falling in love with her first boyfriend, Atlas – himself a product of an abusive household. They’re important because what she experienced as a teen comes flooding back to Lily in the present.
A seemingly casual kitchen scene with her Dad shows us that, while he’s affectionate to Lily, there’s clearly an atmosphere of fear in the home. Further snatches of memories (are they repressed memories?) make the story click: Lily’s father is a violent abuser, physically assaulting her mother, and seriously injuring Lily’s boyfriend when he catches him in her bed.
“We’re all on messy journeys that don’t always have a clear beginning, middle, and end. I hoped it might help people feel less alone to see Lily simultaneously strong and vulnerable, put together and fallible, lost and found.”
~ Actor Blake Lively
What It Ends With Us does well here is intertwine Lily’s memories of this abuse with the actions she’s seeing and feeling from Ryle in the present. As Director Justin Baldoni puts it, “As you get deeper into the story and the layers of the onion start getting unpeeled, you start to understand what the story is actually about.” Lily’s already lived through a childhood of trauma, watching her father assault her mother at home. As an adult, has she now unwittingly stepped into her mother’s shoes?
Commendably, It Ends With Us also takes time to imply that Ryle’s behaviour might hinge in part on his own unresolved trauma (involving a death in his own family as a child). So the film avoids the easy trap of labelling an abuser as a “monster” that doesn’t deserve help. Without absolving his deeds, it’s important to acknowledge that Ryle does unforgivable things within a complex situation that isn’t black or white. As Baldoni states: “We wanted to show that there may be real love while not running away from that fact that there is also real harm.”
What does It Ends with Us have to say about the confusion of abuse?
Here’s where It Ends With Us really proves its worth. Lily’s past doesn’t just inform her present: it blocks her from fully understanding it. Lily’s naturally positive and independent – but because she's traumatised, her trust dissolves and her fear is triggered when Ryle’s words or actions appear to cross the line. But has he really?
When the film shows these actions using quick flash cuts, we can’t quite be sure if Lily’s trauma is colouring what she’s experiencing, or if Ryle’s actually being violent and abusive with intent. It's really hard to tell where the truth lies – which is, of course, reflective of the reality of DV. As we mentioned before, this doubt puts us even more into Lily’s state of mind.
In fact, Baldoni makes sure we can step into both character’s shoes. When Lily’s hurt in a kitchen incident, Ryle is completely sympathetic and caring. The scene is edited so we genuinely don’t know if she was accidentally injured, or if Ryle lashed out and hurt her. Is his sympathy authentic, or an abuser’s “fake remorse”? Adding to the confusion, Lily can’t be sure if her latent childhood trauma is causing her to see a simple accident as something far more dangerous.
“I’m so grateful to everyone who has been a part of helping to tell the story in the most authentic way possible… including my colleagues at nomore.org, a national organization dedicated to ending domestic and sexual violence by fueling cultural change.”
~ Director, Actor Justin Baldoni
Lily wants to give the man she loves the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps that’s why she asks her Mum for her own mindset in surviving an abusive marriage. “Why did you stay with him?” she asks, in a private moment. Her mother’s reply is bracingly simple: “It would've been harder to leave. And I loved him.”
Perhaps this answer sums up why It Ends With Us provides such a valuable perspective on abusive relationships. Media narratives around domestic violence often centre on victims who are too afraid to leave, or lacking other options. And while this is often true, it leaves out the reality that emotions like love, compassion, and forgiveness still exist in these relationships – and can be a huge factor in why people remain trapped within cycles of abuse.
As It Ends With Us reveals more of its layers, it makes a good case for how the complexity of trauma can lead a victim into feeling doubt, confusion and self-blame. After another sudden “accident”, Lily stares at her reflection, dabbing makeup to her temple to conceal her latest injury. While she’s silent in the moment, she seems to be asking herself something we’re wondering too: Have I really found myself in a violent marriage, just like Mum? How did this cycle end up repeating?
What are critics saying about It Ends with Us?
“‘It Ends with Us’ handles the important stuff — abuse, trauma and recovery — unexpectedly well.”
- John Nugent, Empire
“As a personal exploration of what it feels like to be caught up in a cycle of violence, it’s a powerful big-screen experience.”
- Caroline Siede, Girl Culture
“Fans pant for romantic male leads who blur the line between passionate and aggressive — and that murk is exactly what the story explores. Can an extravagant gesture double as a red flag?”
- Amy Nicholson, Washington Post
So what’s the takeaway from It Ends with Us?
We asked at the top of this Guide if It Ends With Us was a film that’s worth our analysis (and your spending money). It’s not without its issues: packaged as a romance, it’s unlikely to hook any Oscar voters the way that harder-hitting fare like I, Tonya, Precious or Monster’s Ball did. And is it morally acceptable to wrap a screen story about domestic violence in floral bows and sell it as a swoony escape movie anyway?
Let’s not beat around the flower bush: It Ends With Us definitely has “holiday read” origins. You know the genre; not that long ago, it was commonly called “chick lit” (a term that’s thankfully “fallen out of fashion with publishers, while writers and critics have rejected its inherent sexism”). But just because a story is heightened doesn’t mean it’s lacking in merit.
For those who’ve experienced coercive control, It Ends With Us offers something relatable (okay, maybe apart from the literal brain surgeon). Through Lily, the film empathises with someone whose past trauma clouds and shapes their current experience. For anyone who hasn’t, the film’s layered exploration of this confusion is an eye-opener. Anyone who’s ever bluntly asked “But why don’t they just leave?” or “What did they do to cause it?” needs to watch this film.
Yes, It Ends With Us is glossy, with an earnest narrative and frothy dialogue that some will adore and others might mock (like Lily describing her calling as a florist as “like storytelling… because cut flowers are fleeting. They’re sad AND they’re beautiful”). But – and it’s a big “but” – we can forgive a little soapy sheen when underneath lies a topic with immense value. One that’s told with care and NEEDS to be heard. Leaning on the appeal of a love story might just be the most effective way to get MORE people to hear it. Judging by the box office, it’s working.
Want a great deal to catch It Ends with Us in cinemas?
GRAB YOUR CHEAPER TICKETS HERE!
