Rent It Ends with Us (2024)

Interesting Romantic Melodrama - It Ends with Us review by GI

This glossy romantic melodrama is a mixed bag and I wrestled with it at times. It seems occasionally to be very contrived and the narrative pivots on a massive chance encounter but I suppose that's the magic of stories and film. Blake Lively gives a solid and impressive performance and even though her natural beauty is an asset to the film's story she also manages to 'normalise' her image to a degree that her character does get some grounding. She plays Lily, a woman who has grown up witnessing the violence of her late father towards her mother, an issue that has never been discussed. Hence there's some family trauma that as the film later reveals did involve her and her first true love. However she moves to Boston where she opens her own florists and meet cutes Ryle, (Justin Baldoni, who also directs). He's an impossibly handsome and single brain surgeon (and who likes to take his shirt off....a lot!!). We get a very early hint of Ryle's nature but in short they slowly get it together. Then Lily bumps into her first love, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar) and everything hits the rocks. Here is a drama that has aspirations to look at marital violence, in particular around male jealousy, and does try to invoke the sad and worrying trend towards not talking about it and even just accepting it. It's a film that constantly sets up tension making you anticipate violence but it deals with the arc of Lily's relationship especially with Ryle in a quite subtle and careful way. By the end it's a film that does draw you in and also leaves you wondering whether it's been bold enough.