Rooftop romantic: Blake Lively in ‘It Ends With Us’.
IT ENDS WITH US ***1/2 (127 minutes) M
Keep your handkerchiefs on stand-by for this one.
What begins as a sweet romance between a beautiful budding florist and a remarkably attractive, stubble-loving neurosurgeon slowly morphs into rather pointed, ultimately stirring cautionary tale about the challenge of making sensible decisions and heeding the hard lessons of the past.
While setting up her boutique flower shop in downtown Boston, Lily Bloom (Blake Lively) embarks down a leisurely romantic road with Ryle Kincaid (director Justin Baldoni), a brain surgeon with male model looks and a permanent three-day growth.
While dining in a fancy restaurant Lily encounters owner Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), once a homeless teen she befriended in flashbacks that detail her tumultuous family life with an abusive father (Kevin McKidd).
As Lily’s feelings for Atlas are rekindled Ryle becomes jealous and, inevitably, a symbol of the type of male behaviour Lily should not want back in her life.
This calls on her to make some hard decisions, but is she brave enough to make them? Can the promise of renewed romance overwhelm her common sense and appreciation of what a good future demands?
With a precise understanding of melodramatic beats, Baldoni’s fine direction generates a considerable emotional charge as we grow ever closer to Lily’s predicament, hoping she will choose what is right over what feels good.
Even cynics might find the film working its way under their guard and leading them to get caught up in a moving, very well-finessed finale clearly designed to give the tear ducts a good workout.
Baldoni, Lively and Colleen Hoover, the author of the hit 2016 novel on which the film draws, acted as producers.
Perilous as it always is to make predictions, it’s easy to see It Ends With Us striking a huge chord, especially – though not exclusively – with women. Based on the author’s experiences, the story confronts the issue of bad male behaviour and the complicity required for its propagation.
That the film largely avoids any bombastic moralizing makes its message all the stronger and all the more moving.