It Ends With Us, the review of the film with Blake Lively

When the moist-eyed flower girl Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) meets (albeit for a somewhat sad reason) the handsome neurosurgeon Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni) at the beginning of the new romantic drama It Ends With Usthe film at least has the good sense to have the two of them good-naturedly poke fun at each other for their ridiculous names. This is a first sign that the film (based on the beloved/hated novel by Colleen Hoover from the screenwriter Christy Hall and directed by Baldoni) is in careful hands. In addition to keeping the love story light and enjoyable, this sweetly ironic self-awareness intelligently structures the grave seriousness that lies ahead.

Contributing greatly to this careful sense of balance is Lively. It Ends With Us adds to a growing list of solid performances from an actress who is almost a kind of movie star from an alternate dimension (that’s a compliment). Lively has made a series of films very different from what many perhaps bigger names are making these days: the magical realism-infused love story of Adaline – The Eternal Youththe tense domestic drama thriller from Close your eyesthe tortuous yellow of A small favor. Paradise Beach – Inside the Nightmarea thriller that recalls Gravity but with sharks, it’s more in line with other recent products from the big studios, but Lively still gives it her own touch. The fact that Lively works incessantly in her own particular way is appreciable; and in any case her only (useless) superhero film, Green Lanternat least has the merit of having introduced her to her husband.

In It Ends With UsLively brilliantly gives voice and body to an old-school drama, albeit with some decidedly modern flourishes. When we first meet her, Lily is reluctantly returning to her native Maine (a fictional town called Plethora, for some reason) for her father’s funeral. Her mother (played by the great Chicago stage actress Amy Morton) is devastated by grief, but Lily is cold and reserved. During the funeral service she goes on stage to give a speech about her father, but leaves before she gets halfway through.

The tale of Lily’s past that brought her to this point is half the film. The other half is about Ryle making Lily fall in love just as she has befriended his irascible sister, Allysa (Jenny Slatefunny and touching). Sumptuously packaged (Hoboken and Jersey City make charming stand-ins for Boston), as it progresses It Ends With Us turns out to be a film about the lingering scars of domestic violence, as Lily weighs the risks and rewards of choosing to trust a man when others in her life have given her little reason to do so.

Lively fine-tunes the caution of Lily, who is a free spirit with a passion for flowers and eccentric clothes but also a wounded soul who protects herself with the mettle of a loner. Lively’s performance involves mostly affecting shy flirtations, naturalistic murmurs and forced smiles during unpleasant conversations. It’s a mode that she does well. The fact that Lily is a sort of passive figure, who reacts mostly to the threatening or caring interference of men, is not so much a limiting aspect of Lively’s performance as of the story being told. It Ends With Us (in the generous reading that I’m willing to grant it at the moment) is about a recessive person who manages to overcome the dulling of trauma to finally face the pain of the past and free himself from its all-consuming influence.

Where the film enters a minefield is in its long-term vision of reconciliation. Critics of the book accuse Hoover’s narrative of downplaying domestic violence by needlessly complicating Lily’s relationship with it. Not having read the novel, I can only judge by what I saw in the film. And the film offers an admirably nuanced (though unflinching) interpretation of Lily’s situation, taking into account an abuser’s view that does not necessarily imply or preclude forgiveness. Perhaps the best way to judge the message of It Ends With Us is that the film’s conclusions work well enough for Lily, but should not be considered an explicit rule for anyone in the real world.

It’s a difficult line to draw in our tense, sermon-prone age, where specific stories are often given general readings, which are then subjected to revision for their educational value or rhetorical harm. Perhaps the most controversial was Hoover, who presented his story as a kind of love triangle between Lily, Ryler, and Atlas Corrigan (Brandon Sklenar), a former high school sweetheart who has also known violence and who reappears in Lily’s life at an inopportune (or perhaps just in time) moment. But the film doesn’t present it as a choice between two men at all. Rather, it’s, very persuasively, about the bond between two old loves who commiserate, and that takes on new weight when the present begins to echo the past. That such a bond, so long neglected, can still be so vital is a disarmingly heartbreaking idea.

Yes, the film is weighed down by the usual frills. Nicholas Sparks. Atlas (whose name no one ever makes fun of) is a disheveled ex-marine with a pickup truck who reinvents himself as a sensitive chef – a man whose hands are rougher than those of the inconsistent, cultured, and insecure Ryle. As for vigorous masculinity and defenseless girlish femininity, It Ends With Us is quite prescriptive about gender roles. But as soon as a man vows to protect the little girl in his arms, the mother promises her something deeper, truer, and less generic. It Ends With Us It’s a tearjerker that revels in its own dark drama, but then gives it the grace of nuance, complexity and a truly rare humanity.