Blake Lively’s hair is like a character unto itself in the new romantic drama “It Ends With Us.”
Her thick mane shapeshifts with her role, Lily Bloom, a flower shop owner who falls in and out of love with an abusive neurosurgeon. Lively’s hair, dyed a soft ginger, is artfully messy when she gets her hands dirty starting up the store. The camera follows a mass of buoyant curls when she struts into a party dressed to impress the man who will ultimately betray her. When she wakes up post-coitus, her hair is perfectly tousled. When she is sad, it droops as if by magic.
You could say Blake Lively’s hair is a tool she uses to sell her performance, but her performance is also a tool she uses to sell her hair. Those who are impressed with her locks in “It Ends With Us” can learn from her Instagram that she recently debuted a line of hair-care products called Blake Brown. (Brown is her father’s last name.)
In many ways “It Ends With Us” is a brand-building exercise for Lively. Yes, the film, directed by Justin Baldoni, is an adaptation of a popular novel, meant to lure fans of the best-selling author Colleen Hoover, but it also serves as an advertisement for the world of Lively — not just her talent but her celebrity and her other significant role, mogul, making the film a fascinating study in the various forms star power can take.
On the most readily understandable level, “It Ends With Us” makes a convincing case for Lively as an actress. Her particular je ne sais quoi was evident back in the 2007 pilot of “Gossip Girl,” which opened with a tribute to her allure. Her character — Serena van der Woodsen, the rich girl with a troubled past — arrives at Grand Central, back in New York after a mysterious absence, and everyone turns toward her. As she looks around the train station’s vast hall, she looks gorgeous and wistful, every flip of her hair (that hair!) seems imbued with greater meaning.
Like every young star on that prime-time soap, Lively made a bid for a film career. “Green Lantern” (2011) didn’t win her a franchise, but it did introduce her to her future husband, Ryan Reynolds. The dark comedy “A Simple Favor” (2018), in which she played a martini-stirring psychopath, was a surprise box office success and garnered a fervent enough fan base to earn a sequel. But Lively seemed to struggle to find her niche in movies, and while she received some praise for performances in the romance “The Age of Adaline” (2015) and the survival thriller “The Shallows” (2016), nothing propelled her to the next level of fame on the big screen.
And yet Lively has long telegraphed her ambitions beyond acting. In 2014 she started Preserve, a lifestyle website that shilled expensive artisanal products and seemed like a folksier attempt at a Gwyneth Paltrow-esque Goop expansion. It was quickly shuttered, but she has continued to expand her reach in other ways. In addition to the hair products, she also founded the beverage labels Betty Buzz and Betty Booze, one with alcohol and one without.
Both Reynolds and motherhood are a key part of the Lively image. She presents herself as a doting mom to her four children, just as Lily ultimately is to her daughter in “It Ends With Us.” On the red carpet, she told E! that Reynolds wrote a scene in the film, which has a screenplay credited to Christy Hall. It’s a comment that has fueled rumors of on-set drama involving Baldoni, but also furthers the notion that the marriage is a team business.
Reynolds himself is something of a master of shameless cross-promotion. Players from Wrexham A.F.C., the soccer team Reynolds co-owns, cameo in his superhero blockbuster “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Fans of that movie can also buy limited-edition bottles of Aviation Gin, another Reynolds enterprise. But whereas Reynolds’s big summer hit offers plenty of opportunities to break the fourth wall and shout out its star’s real-life interests — that’s Deadpool’s whole deal — “It Ends With Us” is a different beast. Lively is not playing a character who knows she’s in a movie played by Blake Lively, she’s portraying a woman in a state of emotional turmoil.
Plenty of other actors have side hustles — George Clooney has tequila, Scarlett Johansson, skin care — but rarely do these intersect so explicitly with their onscreen work. Lively doesn’t seem to separate her acting career from her other efforts. She’s pulling double duty promoting both with a pop-up store in New York called Betty Blooms, where she posed in front of a sign for “fresh flowers & fizzy refreshments.” A promotional email explained how to make “It Ends With Us”-inspired cocktails using Betty Buzz. One recipe called for Reynolds’s gin. It’s a cheery gimmick that seems awkwardly out of step with the context of the film itself, which tells the story of a woman dealing with domestic violence.
Lively has infused a little bit of herself into every aspect of the film. The look of Lily’s store evokes the earthy but pricey ideals that were once highlighted on Preserve. And then there’s the use of Taylor Swift’s “My Tears Ricochet” during a pivotal moment, a reminder that Lively is close friends with one of the most powerful pop stars in the world. It’s a music cue that immediately takes us out of the story and reminds us just who Lively is and the kind of influence she wields.
“It Ends With Us” does give Lively a chance to act — and she’s often quite good at it. As Lily, she is captivating, the kind of performer who seems to flirt with the camera, drawing the whole audience into her orbit. You see why people fall in love with her onscreen. But the performance is almost beside the point. Lively has transformed the project into film-as-commerce. It’s a savvy bit of persona curation that might not be particularly cinematic, but is perhaps Lively’s masterpiece.
Read More: What ‘It Ends With Us’ Says About the Blake Lively Brand
