Review: In ‘It Ends With Us,’ flirtation leads to abuse in a movie that soft-pedals the source text

To understand the new Blake Lively-starring romantic melodrama “It Ends With Us” is to understand that it exists in context: the context of the current landscape of the publishing industry, which is dominated by female authors and consumers. “It Ends With Us” is a cathartic personal story for Hoover, based on family experience, about a woman, Lily overcoming a cycle of domestic abuse, which she witnessed in her parents’ marriage and later experiences herself in a toxic relationship. Perhaps it was in the screenwriting or a top-down decision based on test screenings and audience reaction, but there is a clear choice made to conceal Ryle’s true nature, revealing his intentions late in the film, in a montage that does not square with how the events proceed in Hoover’s telling. Baldoni’s stylistic approach to crafting Hoover’s world is to offer the romantic escapist fantasy inherent to the literary and cinematic genre: elaborate costume and production design, luxe interiors, a Boston where it mysteriously never snows, extensive courtship and seduction montages set to contemporary indie ballads. But there are also harsh realities that the story must face, and gilding Lily’s experience by softening the trauma doesn’t serve the harsh truths that Hoover unearthed in her book, which clearly connected with a large female readership craving stories like this.