“It Ends with Us” Movie Revelation

I watched this movie, starring Blake Lively and (the impossibly gorgeous) Justin Baldoni, the other day on a plane. I thought I was signing up for another light rom-com.

The movie portrays a romance between a woman named Lily, launching her dream of opening a flower shop, and a young neurosurgeon named Ryle. They meet when on the roof of their building in Boston, where she is taking a quiet moment in the night air when he bursts open the door and delivers a near fatal blow to an outdoor chair. In spite of his temper, his charm and attentiveness eventually woo our heroine and they end up together.

In a series of flashbacks, we learn of Lily’s history as the daughter of an abusive father who violently took his anger out on her mother. But that’s in the past and Ryle is the dream boyfriend. Not only does he romance her, but he’s handsome and smart and rich and ripped (as evidenced by a well-placed shirtless scene). The perfect man! Handsome and fit and accomplished and kind and sexy. What more could you want?

As the plot advances, we see an encounter when Ryle burns his hand cooking for Lily. Of course, as a neurosurgeon about to perform and important surgery, injuring his hand could be catastrophic. Lily tries to help and somehow in the chaos she gets hurt too and ends up with a black eye. It’s an accident, but afterwards, his bandaged hand and her black eye seem to tell a story. That night, they happen to run into her high school sweetheart, Atlas, also from a violent home, at his trendy new restaurant. Atlas is pretty sure he knows that story and jumps in to defend Lily.

There’s another incident where Ryle and Lily are arguing, and she ends up falling down the stairs, injuring her head. Also, an accident, Ryle assures Lily as he’s tending to her wound.

At this point in the film, I’m thinking “that’s so odd how these accidents occur that injure her. It really looks bad, but clearly they were accidents. That must be part of the plot because poor Atlas (also from a violent home) who still holds a flame for Lily, is going to think there’s abuse going on when there’s not.”

Eventually, as Lily starts to put the pieces together, we see fresh footage of the “accidents”, with Ryle clearly hitting her and pushing her down the stairs. Together with Lily, we begin to re-cast the narrative. Ryle is violent. We’ve seen it multiple times now, and her injuries do tell the story. It is as it appears. I was as shocked as Lily by this obvious turn of events.

This film deeply upset me because I was so taken in by the romantic narrative. I wanted Ryle to be innocent. I wanted to believe in their love conquering all. He was the perfect man! Heck, I was in love with him! I wanted the fairy tale, just as I did in my own marriage, where I too put blinders on.

Mind you, my husband was never physically violent (thank goodness), but he was emotionally abusive. And he was also handsome, intelligent, strong, and capable, loving and utterly devoted to me and our family. I was deeply in love with him for the 30 years we were together. I felt so blessed. And in many ways I was. In fact, the abuse was its own blessing because it taught me so much. 

This film helped me see my own powerful mechanism of denial of inconvenient realities. Even though I’ve done a great deal of healing work around this, I still fell for the fairytale narrative presented in “It End with Us”. Apparently, there’s still more to learn.