It Ends with Us is the latest romance film based on the best-selling novel by Colleen Hoover. Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom, who opens a flower shop in Boston where she meets Ryle (Justin Baldoni, who also directs). But when a love from a past re-acquaints himself, her relationships begin to unfold. However, whilst this film’s opening act and marketing represent a melodramatic love triangle, its darker undertone quietly bubbles underneath the surface until an eruptive scene at a restaurant.
The film opens with a whimsical and melodramatic tone. This sort has left the cinema and emerged to a new audience on Netflix. From the piano score that sounds like the audible equivalent of someone running to the B-roll of a suburban Maine in Autumn, it presents the aura of melodrama, reflective and subdued—asking us to reflect on the quiet scenes and read into facial expressions.
For the most part, the opening of this film follows this style. It is dreamy and whimsical, slow and methodical. This is perhaps where the film works at its best; although not say much, it presents an analysis of the beauty of life. From Boston skylines or the browning leaves on oak trees, the film is able to comfortably stay in a meditative tone, helped by the shallow depth of field and tight close-ups that Baldoni uses to create a connection to Lily.
As Lily begins to open her flower shop, montages of date nights and happy reveals gloss over the film whilst also flashing back to her past with her childhood sweetheart Atlas. Not only is the casting for the younger Lily spot-on, but at times, this b-line quietly outshines the main narrative. A coming-of-age tale of kindness and growth as Lily and Atlas’s relationship blooms despite the hardships and challenges they face. They discuss Lily’s love for flowers, and the importance and care needed to grow plants and produce. Meanwhile, this throughline provides context to her complicated relationship with her father, who is abusive to her mother. Thus, not only does this sub-narrative provide context, but it also acts as a way of binding the melodramatic opening act with the harrowing latter scenes.
However, as the film develops, it is clear that Baldoni wants to uncover something darker and more ominous through a series of unfortunate accidents which slowly drive the film into a thriller of abuse and anxiety. Whilst both work and the moments where Baldoni is able to speed up and slow down scenes to alter the audience’s perception are particularly clever, the juxtaposition in subgenre leaves the film feeling clunky and amateurish. This is not aided by poorly written dialogue; lines such as “I’m an unreliable narrator” feel too meta for a film at the time, going for the cutesy approach. In contrast, at other times, the dialogue is stilted and awkward. Likewise, the soundtrack is an eclectic but muddled mix of needle drops from Thom Yorke’s purposefully monotonous ‘Dawn Chorus’, with the lyrics undercutting dialogue (perhaps an instrumental version of the song would have been more suitable), to Taylor Swift’s ‘My tears ricochet’ towards the film’s conclusion, which is an elongated sludge unable to provide any sort of analysis on the narrative journey of the film, nor any kind of catharsis or relief for the characters.
While the film delivers an important message about domestic abuse, it cannot potently present any form of conclusion that will satisfy either the rom-com audience the film is marketed to nor the more serious drama crowd crying for narrative catharsis. It Ends with Us is a film that attempts to cater to everyone but, by doing so, caters to no one.
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