'It Ends With Us:' Can we please ban this harmfully inaccurate movie?

The movie's romantic spin on the complex and often deadly effort to leave an abuser perpetuates victim-blaming.

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Hi cacti,

Look, I know I’m late to the party, but I finally streamed “It Ends With Us” on Netflix. I had heard the movie was vapid (or “frothy,” as one reviewer put it), and that Colleen Hoover’s blockbuster-selling book of the same name wasn’t much denser, but I tried to keep an open mind. I figured any creative work that increases awareness about domestic violence is a good thing, even if all the characters are rich and beautiful, and the plot holes are plentiful.

As much as we’d like to pretend otherwise, “intimate partner violence” is all around us yet rarely openly discussed. Though I didn’t know her personally, I am the friend-of-a-friend of Susanne Simpson, a (rich and beautiful) San Antonio woman who almost certainly was murdered by her husband after years of hidden abuse. Covert male violence like this unfortunately happens all the time, among families both rich and poor. In wealthy communities, it’s often more insidious, because money talks louder than a victim’s suffering. Maybe, I thought “It Ends With Us” might awkwardly-but-forthrightly unpack how privilege is no protection against patriarchy?

Har, har har, no, it definitely did not do that. Instead, the opposite. It perpetuates harmful myths. This movie made leaving an abusive relationship look as easy as crashing at your ex’s cute house for a few nights, and not like what it really is—dangerous, lengthy, and complicated. Worse, it made pregnancy and a new baby seem like just the motivation a violent man needs to get his shit together, when in reality, homicide by a domestic partner is the number one cause of death for pregnant women in the US. (Homicide!)

After I watched the movie, I immediately went online to read reviews. Surely, people would have noticed the bullshit? How it takes more than naming your new baby after your abusive husband’s dead brother to get him to own up to his traumatic past and triggers? But nope, few reviewers seemed loudly bothered by the breezy framing, even among heavyweights like New York Times reviewer Manohla Dargis (though I did like this one, by a social worker).

The lack of rage perhaps hints at how a movie like this gets made, and why abusers still get away with it: We don’t care enough about the problem to demand better.

The frothy first half

At first, I was a little bored but not horrified. We meet aspiring floral shop owner Lily Bloom (get it?), and Ryle, her future husband, an aggressively flirtatious neurosurgeon with an aggressively modern apartment and a tendency to throw chairs (Ryle is easily riled up, so to speak). They go on fancy dates and have fancy sex. It’s not clear how Lily has so much money for designer lingerie and a flower store full of weirdly dark Victorian decor, but that’s beside the point, right?

I told myself her wealth must have been inherited after the death of her father, whose funeral is the movie’s opening scene. Via flashbacks (so. many. flashbacks.), we learn her dad used to violently attack Lily’s mother and once nearly killed Lily’s teen boyfriend, Atlas. We also learn the backstory of Atlas, who, as his not-so-subtle name implies, is carrying the world on his shoulders as a homeless teen who’s conveniently moved into a vacant home right across from Lily’s. Lily and Atlas start planting things together in her garden, both literally and metaphorically. Wink wink, star-crossed lovers!

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The midpoint crash and burn

The plot takes a dark turn midway, when Ryle’s so far mostly-welcomed love-bombing turns into suspicion and jealousy. The reason for the new friction? Unbeknownst to Lily, Atlas has opened a restaurant right across from Lily’s flower shop. And he’s named it Root, after all those teenage halcyon days of being homeless and digging in the dirt with Lily! This means lots of little unintentional meet-cutes with Atlas that get Ryle… erm, riled up. In spite of how conveniently tension-building this plot point was, and all the goofy names, Ryle’s anger IS an accurate and common behavior among abusers — the slide from charming into controlling as the abuser’s insecurity becomes toxic.

At this point, the movie could have gone hard and made us feel the very real terror and trauma that domestic violence victims experience, and shed light on the systemic forces that make it hard for even wealthy women to get away. But no, the movie paints Lily’s escape as a mostly lighthearted romp, complete with a rain-soaked hug with Atlas, her ex. After she is attacked by Ryle, she stays at Atlas’s house while Ryle cools off at a fellowship in the UK, instead of, you know, going to jail. She also learns she is pregnant (obvious plot twist!) and there’s no discussion of abortion or how she’ll manage to keep her and the baby safe. Meanwhile, Ryle texts her a few times from abroad but is basically chill about Lily shacking up with Atlas.

Absurdly, even though she’s successfully gotten her abuser out of her life with very little muss or fuss, Lily invites Ryle back for a little shared co-parenting (!). Not because she feels forced to by Ryle or the court system, or because she has no money or home — but because she wants to. Even more absurdly, Ryle attends her delivery. She uses the opportunity of a new female human in the room to give him an impassioned speech about why their daughter can be the catalyst for Ryle’s personal growth, despite his track record so far, and oh, every statistic ever. I had my hackles up at this point, and I screamed a little when she let him hold their newborn. Men who abuse women also abuse kids, you know? Lily, don’t you of all people, get that!? No, no, she doesn’t. She’s going to be really stupid about all this, and we’re all going to like it, apparently.

The ending: Healed — just like that!

At some point, near the end, Lily and her baby drive away on a winding road in a beautiful coastal prairie, her lion’s mane of hair flying about. We learn she’s on her way to visit her mother, who has still never explained why she never left Lily’s father. Lily asks, but her mother shrugs the discussion off like they were talking about a Panera’s new menu, and not a shared legacy of intergenerational trauma. In the closing scene, Lily reflects (maybe on how easy this all was) and decides—you guessed it!—it ends with us.

And good for her! If only that was how things played out IRL.

The reality

So, yeah, based on my blood pressure alone, I’m definitely NOT going to read the book.

While I have luckily never been a victim of domestic violence, like many people, it is part of my family history. My grandfather hit my grandmother and his children, including my father. Our grandmother came and went from the relationship, but ultimately stayed with him until his death by suicide when I was ten.

Because of this traumatic history, and my general interest in understanding trauma of all types, a few years ago I read the excellent and eye-opening book “No Visible Bruises: What We Don't Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us,” by Rachel Louis Snyder.

THIS is the book to read that will rectify all the bullshit perpetuated in the media, including “It Ends With Us.” No, there are no rain-soaked romantic hugs in your ex’s trendy Boston farm-to-table restaurant, but there are maddening insights and lots of keep-you-on-your-toes storytelling of women who have gone through hell, not all of them surviving. Because that is what’s really happening IRL—women and children are dying, or tortured, and the system is failing them.

I especially loved the chapter about the shelter system—how we expect a woman to leave with her kids and stay in crappy and secretive (hint: shameful) temporary housing, which is devastating and disorienting not just to her but her entire family. Getting to work can become a whole new nightmare, for one thing. What if we flipped it around, and instead of the legal system issuing tsk-tsks and restraining orders, we actually held abusive men accountable by sending them to jail and making them complete a violence rehabilitation program?

Now THAT’S a storyline I’d love to see depicted in a movie.

(Did you watch the movie? What did you think? Please dish!)