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This piece discusses gendered abuse and may be difficult for some people to read. Women’s Aid offers a free 24-hour National Helpline 24/7 on 1800 341 900.Reach out for help if you need it.
Last week, I went to the cinema on my own at 10.30am. It’s not as sad as it sounds – I was attending a press screening of a new film. I admit, I had come out of a tough week with little sleep and hadn’t done any reading up on the film I was about to see. I simply knew that it was some kind of romance drama, there had been a flower-filled PR campaign, and it was based on a book by Colleen Hoover, whose novels I have not read but who I was vaguely aware once had to apologise for trying to make some extra dollars by promoting a novel by also selling a companying colouring book. I didn’t remember when entering the cinema, but that colouring book was designed to accompany a novel called It Ends With Us. As it turns out, Colleen Hoover and the people around her still don’t know how to market a story about domestic violence in a respectful way.
As I watched It Ends With Us, I felt my body tense up, though initially, I wasn’t clear as to why. Maybe I was just having a full-body eye-roll at a film where the lead character is called Lily Blossom Bloom and her lifelong dream is to open a flower shop. (There is a dissertation to be written on female characters in films who run ultra-feminine businesses: flower shops, bakeries, cafes. “These women are strong independent business owners!” I can hear a scriptwriter telling a producer. “But in the least threatening way possible, where they’re still adhering to traditionally gendered work of cooking, baking, serving other people, making things pretty – it’s TradGirlBoss!”)
The film begins as stylish, almost hyper-pretty romance between Lily and rich neurosurgeon Ryle (Justin Baldoni.) These two obscenely attractive people seem to have, quite literally, the relationship of romance novels – some spark, some resistance, a whirlwind romance, a rich and luxury-filled life.
But something is off. Ryle has a temper. Flashbacks reveal darkness in Lily’s childhood home. And when Ryle becomes jealous of Lily’s past love, everything quickly unravels. We see how Lily and Ryle’s relationship is far from perfect. We revisit past scenes that were glossed over and see the grim reality. We remember that Lily, at the start of the film, calls herself an unreliable narrator. It’s not that Lily was intentionally lying to the audience – rather, she was lying to herself, overlooking incidents of control and escalating violence, focusing on Ryle’s good qualities, the romantic moments, the pretty privilege of their wealthy life until she cannot lie to herself any longer.
The film evokes Lily’s emotional journey, showing how she fell for Ryle so hard, loved him so much, that she wants to believe the best of him. She wants to believe that it was an accident, that he didn’t mean it, that he’s sorry. She wants to understand his childhood trauma, wants him to feel safe, wants to show him the unconditional love he cannot give himself. So she downplays the bad, focuses on the good, assures her friends – and we the audience – that her handsome husband is a good man. Until it becomes very clear that he is not.
It Ends With Us is a flawed film – Lily’s characterisation beyond her relationships with men is paper-thin. Supporting characters are similarly one-dimensional. The script is clunky. Everything is too stylised and prettified. A Taylor Swift-filled soundtrack makes the film feel trendy and manipulative rather than timeless and emotionally resonant. None of this mattered.
Half an hour before the end of the film I began sobbing and didn’t stop. The film’s emotional arc? The journey of making the audience fall for a handsome, charming, successful man; drip-feeding his flaws and blurring them in the rosy haze of romance; then gut-punching us with the realisation that this isn’t a love story but abuse.
It brought up my own journey of being in an abusive relationship. The way I had fallen for him. The small incidents I ignored. The boundaries I didn’t keep. The excuses I made for him. The way I explained away his behaviour by focusing on his difficult childhood. The way the abuse got worse, but was followed by declarations of love and romance, and the way I always latched onto the latter.
And the way that by the end, even though the abuse was so core-shakingly horrific, I didn’t quite understand how I’d got there, because I’d been lying the whole time – to my friends and family and to myself. All to protect the man who never wanted to protect me. I left the cinema and went home and cried. For Lily, for myself, for all the women who have had their love story turn into a tale of abuse.
Yes, It Ends With Us is a deeply flawed film, but its message is still important and one worth talking about.