Buried under the gauzy romanticism of “It Ends With Us” — under the softly diffused visuals, the endless montage sequences, the sensitive mewling on the soundtrack and the luxuriously coifed thickets of Blake Lively’s sunset-on-Malibu-Beach dyed-red hair — is a tough little movie about women, bad choices, worse men and decisions that doesn’t fit into a tidy box.
Lively stars as the improbably named Lily Blossom Bloom, a beauty with a traumatic history, a soulful ex and a passion for gardening. Over the course of the movie, she falls in love with a neurosurgeon who looks like he stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad. She also befriends a wisecracking sidekick, opens a whimsical floral shop, endures heartache and, after much reflection and many plot complications, finds herself. It’s hard going, but Lily takes whatever life throws at her with her meticulously styled head up and a neo-bohemian influencer vibe. She’s a dream of a woman, an aspirational ideal, an Instagram-era Mildred Pierce.
You may know Mildred from Turner Classic Movies as the pie-baking survivor played by Joan Crawford in the 1945 noir “Mildred Pierce.” Mildred walks into that classic wearing a mink coat with linebacker shoulder-pads and the kind of stricken look that clouds a woman’s face when she discovers that her no-good second husband is sleeping with her no-good teenage daughter, and the brat has just offed the creep. It’s no wonder that when Mildred stares into the nighttime waters of the Pacific, she seems to be mulling her equally dark past and future, much as Lily does one evening on a Boston rooftop early on in “It Ends With Us.”
Lily doesn’t have long to consider her existential options because her rooftop reveries are soon interrupted by the neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni, who directed the movie). A brooding hunk with soft eyes, hard muscles and miraculously unchanging three-day stubble, Ryle has a touch of menace and a gift for cornball lines, and before long he and Lily are flirtatiously circling each other. Love buds and, yes, blooms, and Lily settles down with Ryle. He seems like a ready-made catch (Baldoni gives himself plenty of close-ups), although anyone at all familiar with the conventions of romantic fiction will wonder about the intensity of his attentions. A picture-perfect guy doesn’t necessarily make a picture-perfect life, dig?
Adapted from Colleen Hoover’s best seller by Christy Hall, “It Ends With Us” is fitfully diverting, at times touching, often ridiculous and, at 2 hours and 10 minutes, almost offensively long. It’s visually and narratively overbusy, stuffed with flashbacks of Lily as an adolescent (Isabela Ferrer) that create two parallel lines of action. As the adult Lily moves forward with Ryle and opens her store — she gets help from a nattering assistant, Allysa (Jenny Slate), who enters with her luxury bag swinging and motormouth running — images of the past fill in Lily’s history and her high-school romance with another student, Atlas (Alex Neustaedter plays him as a teen, while Brandon Sklenar steps into the grown-up role.)
Even the kitschiest romances have a way of sinking their hooks into you, and so it is here, at least intermittently. Love stories work on us because love does, with the bonus that watching beautiful people suffer beautifully is a reason movies were invented. Lively is eminently suited to this task and has some strong moments, but she’s often ill-served by the filmmaking. The flashbacks add information, yet they also pull you away from the adult Lily, which fragments Lively’s performance and drains the slow-building momentum of her scenes. Just as unfortunately, Baldoni prettifies everything — trees, cityscapes, people — to the point that each detail, pose and smile seems lifted from a lifestyle ad instead of true, messy reality.
The most interesting thing about “It Ends With Us” is how it at once deploys romantic conventions and tries to wiggle around the more regressive aspects of those conventions. Finding a balance between these elements is tricky, and partly a reason that persuasive romances are so hard to pull off now. One obvious issue is that women who have actual choices — women who are straight or Sapphic or queer, who marry or don’t, who have children or cats or both — don’t easily or reflexively fit into tired Hollywood-style formulas. With her trauma and therapeutic epiphanies, her sparkly boots and Carhartt coveralls, Lily seems thoroughly modern, but she’s trapped in a story whose sell-by date has expired.
It Ends With Us
Rated PG-13 for domestic violence, some language and discreet lovemaking. Running time: 2 hours 10 minutes. In theaters.
Read More: ‘It Ends With Us’ Review: Love Hurts, and Sometimes Bruises
