What Does 'It Ends With Us' Actually Say About Domestic Violence?
For this troubled film, behind-the-scenes drama is an unwelcome distraction
Spoilers ahead, TW: domestic violence, sexual assault
Coverage of It Ends With Us, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover's hit novel, has filled my timeline for the past week. Ironically, very few people seem to be discussing the actual film, preferring instead to unpack the alleged feud between the film's leading man and director, Justin Baldoni, and its star-slash-producer Blake Lively. It's not just that Baldoni and Lively have been conspicuously separate on the press tour, but they seem to be promoting two different visions of the film.
In simplest terms, the film is a romantic drama. It revolves around a love triangle between florist Lily Bloom, her brooding partner Ryle Kincaid, and her first love Atlas, a successful chef, who fortuitously re-enters Lily's life as Ryle's abusive and jealous tendencies emerge. Aesthetically, it’s lush with deep autumn colors and purple-green florals. Lively played into this lushness, pitching the film as a dishy summer romance, telling viewers to "grab your friends and wear your florals." Baldoni, on the other hand, focused more on the abuse storyline, which culminates in Ryle's attempted rape of Lily. He has mentioned repeatedly how he believes this film has the power to help survivors, earning internet-wide praise, while Lively’s glibness about the impact of domestic violence has been rightly called out by survivors. But, as reviewers have noted, Lively’s interpretation of the film as a glossy romance isn’t entirely wrong. True, It Ends With Us is far from a romantic comedy but its portrayal of domestic violence is stymied by its romantic veneer and lack of substance.
To its credit the film attempts to psychologically unpack the impulses that lead Ryle to his abuse. It’s an appreciable attempt to shift the narrative of domestic abuse from, as Baldoni himself said, questioning why women stay to instead questioning why men harm. We learn that as a child, Ryle accidentally killed his older brother while messing around with the family gun. His morbid past is contrasted by his current job as a neurosurgeon where he dedicates himself to saving lives. In this contrast between his job and his past, it’s clear Ryle is wracked by guilt and a sense of eternal inadequacy, undoubtedly driving his jealousy. He attacks Lily in moments of vulnerability, once when she tries to help him fix a burnt frittata and another time when he discovers she’s saved Atlas’s number in secret. At its peak Ryle’s violence turns sexual. He pins Lily down and forces himself on her once he realizes the name of Atlas’s restaurant is inspired by their teenage love. Lily tries to push him away. She says no. That night she leaves Ryle and learns at the hospital, with Atlas by her side, she is pregnant. The scene is meant to be horrifying yet, to my recollection, no one in the film names what Ryle has done. The word ‘rape’ is not uttered once but merely implied and euphemistically alluded to.
After the rape scene the film begins to truly retreat from reality, the monstrosity of its male antagonist seemingly too much to bear. Just as it cannot name the crime of rape, it cannot name the fallout from it. We see Lily move into a new apartment and begin making arrangements for the baby in one of the film's many montages. We don’t see how Ryle reacts to her moving out of his house and are left to assume that his only efforts to contact her are a slew of unanswered texts and phone calls. It’s hard to believe that Ryle, with his deep-seeded loneliness and fear of being unloved, would let Lily leave so quietly. In the next scene where Ryle and Lily are alone together, Ryle comes over to help build a crib. There is no precedent to this scene, no recognition of its significance or insight into Lily’s thought process. All the character building in the first three quarters of the movie crumbles.
It Ends With Us may have been doomed from the start. A film can have elements of both frothy romance and domestic violence, but it cannot fully embody both. It’s too much to ask. It Ends With Us makes its choice in its last act, fast-tracking the audience to a happy ending. Lily and Ryle’s relationship officially ends with the birth of their daughter, named Emmerson after Ryle’s deceased brother (the symbolism in this film is not exactly…subtle). While Ryle is holding his newborn daughter, Lily asks for a divorce. She implores him, what would he want their daughter to do if he was in an abusive relationship? He agrees he’d want her to leave. This logic is the silver bullet—best summarized in that good old prelude men love to use when discussing sexual violence, “as a father of daughters…” Afterwards, Ryle leaves the hospital room without protest, presumably never to abuse or darken Lily’s door again. We can only assume because we never hear from Ryle again. Lily settles into a quaint life with her daughter and reconnects with Atlas in the film’s final scene. Once the credits roll it’s official; the film sacrificed its domestic violence storyline at the altar of romance.
The film falls short as a primer on domestic violence, but its ability to raise awareness doesn’t have to stop on screen. Discussion and critique can fill in the blank gaps of a story, giving viewers the opportunity to better understand where it aligns in the wide spectrum of domestic violence experiences. In order for that to happen, however, people have to actually be talking about the film. The behind-the-scenes drama and Lively’s conduct regressed public discourse to a basic fact I thought we had advanced beyond post MeToo: domestic violence is bad. In a way, it mirrors the film’s inability to say rape. Too caught up in the fluff and glamor, we forget what we’re actually talking about. I’d hope that if the film is not brave enough to confront itself, maybe the audience can do it for them.