A compelling quote: “If people identify that they are in abusive relationships and then after having watched this movie have courage to leave, some will end up being killed. Many will end up without their children. Many will end up homeless and depressed, and most will have PTSD,” she said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.
THIS is what I found most distressing about this movie- not a peep about how dangerous it is to walk away from an abuser.
My ex once threatened to have me killed after I left him. I didn't react. But I went straight to the police station. They asked me if I thought he really meant it. I actually didn't, he was a bully who was trying to intimidate me. I just wanted a record of the threat.
They said if I put in a formal complaint they'd have to arrest him and told me to lodge the incident with a lawyer.
Looking back I wish I'd had it in me at the time to have him arrested but I didn't. If it were now I wouldn't hesitate.
In theory yes, I agree with you. But the reality is that many abused women do not have the resources to ensure safety and are more likely to be more deeply harmed by their enraged abuser by leaving than if they stayed.
I can tell you from experience from living with an abuser that they chip away at your self esteem day by day and emotionally abuse you into believing that you are a worthless human being whose fault it is for their loss of control. Imagine years of this. It's very hard to find the courage to leave.
What gave me the courage was the realization that if I didn't my daughters would grow up believing that this is how men treat women. There was a day when my youngest daughter, at age four, after her father threw a thermos of boiling water at me, told me he didn't mean it to be hot. That was the moment I knew I had to leave.
I had very little support because my family was overseas. If I had known how difficult it would be I'd never have had the courage to do it.
But I did do it and my daughters had the empowering example of walking away from abuse. And they don't take any from anyone.
I agree it can be difficult to leave and I congratulate you on doing so.
But that doesn’t change my point that on every point along your journey, the safest immediate option would have been to leave. Every city in the West has women’s refuges.
In fact, reading back on what you said and reflecting on the events in my own life it would certainly not have been safest to leave at every point along my journey. I would have put my children at risk without having a secure, safe longer term alternative to a refuge.
It's very easy to judge from the outside without having personal experience of what was involved. I left when I knew I was in a position to care properly for my children.
I've read one other very negative review of this movie, also by a woman. I've never read Colleen Hoover, but many of my former students (teen moms) have and do. They often romanticized their boyfriends' jealousy as proof of deep love, no matter how hard our counselor tried to dispute it. I think in some twisted way, if they got hit, it was another evidence of the boyfriend's strong feeling (love?). In some cases, it was just the way the men in their family behaved, too. I'm with you. Authors and movie producers need to stop perpetuating untruths about domestic violence. It too often ends in murder.
Yes. I might deal with teen domestic violence in a future post. Our girls were particularly susceptible to it because many of them are desperate for love and don't recognize real examples of it.
I remember back in the sixties there was a song called something like, "Johnny, show me that you care for me!" Look it up! It's a little fuzzy to remember, but the verses talked about the girl flirting with another guy, or another guy flirting with her, and she wants to see how her boyfriend Johnny would react. The chorus is something like: "Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad; give me the biggest lecture I ever had. I want a cave man; I want a brave man. Johnny show me that you care, really care for me."
Being the victim of domestic violence, this song makes me ill. And I definitely won't watch the movie. I once ran crying from a lecture where a video was shown about domestic violence which showed a man doing something to the woman that my ex had done to me. My ex was well-respected in the community, and no one would've believed me if I'd gone to our friends. He was "a great guy" who everybody loved. Through Co-Dependents Anonymous, Al-Anon, and therapy, I am now at peace and have a happy life, but I still feel the sting when something like this comes up. It's for real, people, and it's everywhere, where you least expect it.
I'm so sorry you went through this. I agree public perception of male jealousy and macho behavior is romanticized in ways that are cruel to DV victims (all women, really). I'm glad you've found helpful practices that bring you to a more peaceful place. Wishing you all the best going forward.
I would also like to add in my own personal horrific history being an abused woman. When you call the police for help after a domestic violence situation, if you have children who happen to have been there to witness it, the cops will turn BOTH OF YOUR NAMES into child protective services and they will subsequently punish you both. I got punched right in the face by my ex husband and called the police for help but then had to fight child neglect charges from CPS. This has happened to so many women that many are actually afraid to report their abusers at all.
It really truly is. One of the pro bono lawyers who helped me in that case told me straight out that Texas CPS systems were set up to be woman punishing machines.
This is horrible! I'm so sorry you experienced this. Things get really complicated when authorities get involved. It's like they don't know who to blame, so they blame everyone. All best.
Until men are raised to see women as people first, there will always be men who think they can use their physical strength to get what they want and as a means of expressing their own uncontrolled emotional issues.
The issues around domestic violence are so misunderstood. As a former social worker and a paralegal who worked exclusively in family law, there are 2 extremes - the women who watched too much Oprah who think an argument with their husband in which he insults her intelligent is abuse worthy of legal and law enforcement intervention - and those who don’t even see how they are abused. I’ve seen professional career women whose husbands know exactly how many minutes it takes them to drive home from work, as well as women whose partners have set them on fire. Even if a woman wants to leave, the logistics are overwhelming. Where do I go? How will the kids get to school? The shelter won’t let me bring my pets. How will I support myself if I can’t get to work or have to take time off? All my papers are still at the house. I can only stay at the shelter for 30 days. He’s not afraid of going to jail if he violates the restraining order, and they’ll just release him anyway. Everyone told me he was bad news, and I’m so ashamed that they were right.
We’re not even getting to the psychological and emotional issues that brought these women to this point, or the struggle it will take to understand how they got there, and to extricate themselves. Or the legal system, that struggles with maintaining the constitutional rights in a situation that has huge social elements and in many states, is handled in family courts as a civil matter rather than criminal.
It’s better than it was, but it still puts the onus and the pressure on the victim. It took more than a few weeks for a woman to become a victim of abuse. How many times do women end up going back again and again to their abusers?
NYS has an “Integrated Domestic Violence Court” where cases of DV that also result in assault or other criminal charges are heard in one court & prosecuted by a DA. That way each matter isn’t handled separately and the judge has the power to impose a criminal sentence, which family court does not. It’s easier on the victim who isn’t dealing w/ a DA, and her own lawyer in family court, or have multiple court appearances. Only the most serious cases are transferred there.
I have not, nor will I watch this movie. Nothing I had read remotely indicated this would be an accurate depiction of domestic violence. I am, however, glued to the drama surrounding the movie, and did read Blake Lively’s full legal complaint that included documents about the marketing strategy for the movie. They basically wanted to avoid talking about domestic violence in the promotion of the movie and instead wanted to convey how it was a story about hope. I have to think whomever made that decision is regretting, because it seems like a colossal FU.
I think I saw it mentioned that they thought abusers would not let their victims see this movie if they really knew what it was about. Most abusers are male, have absorbed and internalized the toxic manifestations of "masculinity" and thus immediately write off rom-coms as "girly shit." They thought more women would be able to "receive the message" of this movie that way. I think that's even why Blake Lively "promoted" her hair care line in press interviews, to make herself seem like a fluffy, self-interested, self-promoting starlet. I don't know her, but despite the unhelpfulness and unreality of the actual film, it seemed that her motivations for being part of this film project were well-intentioned.
The thing about purposely making the pressers "lite" on cultural relevance to try to get more people to go to the film, while it seemed helpful, victims of intimate partner abuse, domestic violence, whatever we prefer to call it, are not likely to have eye-opening revelations about their situation from watching ANY film or documentary about it. Not even if they're told they're likely to be murdered by a Harvard statistician. Why? Because they have already formulated the reasons and justifications they need to stay, and even if the only reason is fear, that reason can't be invalidated when it's reasonable to understand that a person would do what they believe will help them remain alive under immense strain, fear and suffering rather than take an action they believe would lead to their life ending.
It would be well to remember that even though the victims, who are mostly women and are statistically at risk of being murdered by their partners, do not want to be murdered and when they are murdered, they didn't stay because they thought they'd be murdered—they stayed because they were likely made to believe by their partners that their partners would murder them if they DID leave or tried to leave.
Liane Moriarty wrote a novel about intimate partner abuse, Big Little Lies. I didn't read the book but I watched some of the show. It was, imo, a more realistic demonstration (than It Ends a with Us) of how such violence escalates over time and how there can be a tidal-like shifting power dynamic between the abuser and the victim that helps make the victims feel like their cyclically abusive relationship is not as dangerous as it really is. Sometimes, not all the time, abusers express regret and remorse for their abusive episodes (whether it is genuine or contrived, we don't know and can't say), and resume love-bomb behavior, and power is momentarily given to the victim in accepting it.
Nicole Kidman's character went to a therapist and the therapist, knowing she had the means to do so, told her to get an apartment secretly, furnish it, be ready to go there with her children without notice or warning because their lives were at risk. The realest part was when she and us, the viewers, had the same visceral reaction of fear at learning that her husband had found out she was planning to leave him. The moment literally induced a cold wash of my insides and my neck hairs prickled because the way he found out was so simple and the way he revealed it was so innocuous sounding, and we, as the viewers, seeing her secret ordeal, knew what that actually meant for her despite his reasonable words. That moment was real.
I recently read The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. I think that also was a flawed but better portrayal of domestic violence than It Ends With Us. It realistically showed how it's often extended through multiple generations of families partially because the shame of it prevents family members from having meaningful discussions about the impact of the violence they suffer AND dispense. Often the abusers were abused. That is tragic, too.
The hardest thing is that unless you have lived domestic violence, you can’t explain it to the outside ‘normal’ world. It is the loneliest feeling. Seeing a movie like this diminishes the truth behind this issue.
Thank you for this review! So glad someone said this. sighs relief Yes, I watched the movie and I too was horrified by the stereo types it perpetuated. I’ve experienced and left a violent relationship with my children, and I found nothing in this movie that resembled reality. For over ten years I have worked for a social service organization directly with those impacted by and/or fleeing domestic violence so I live this every day of my life, and I’m sick of media and court systems and a patriarchal culture that contributes to the harm. We need the truth not glossed up fairytales. Fyi, having a baby and driving off into the sunset proclaiming it ends here doesn’t actually change things.
Fantastic takedown of the movie - agree 100%. Thank you for painting a picture of the reality of domestic violence - not an easy problem to solve, and typically no peaceful, easy goodbyes from the abuser. Thank you for this analysis. And I'm so sorry for the abuse in your family - it happened in mine too. These cycles are hard to break. Sending hugs...
Thank you for taking a stand, Joy. While I have lot been a victim of domestic violence, I did spend almost a year photographing women and their male abusers, as well as advocates for series of stories. The situations were complex and varied and dangerous, even/especially after the women left. I didn’t bother reading the book because I kept hearing how poorly written it was. After this post, I won’t bother to watch the movie. And how ironic the lead actor is accused of sexual harassment.
Joy, love and agree with your take on the movie. I think it speaks to the general public's perverse appetite for -and conflation of- dominance/control as a form of romance that we should all be so lucky to find. I mean, think about Beauty and the Beast! Belle was held captive and then fell in love with the guy (beast..?). We've been fed these narratives for sooo long. And none of it is helpful for the 1 in 3 women who experience some form of sexual and/or physical abuse (I suspect the number is higher but that is just what is reported).
Another fantastic book on DV is "See what you made me do" by Jess Hill. Highly recommend.
I absolutely agree. I watched 50 shades of grey a couple of years ago (late to the party I know), think it'd be a bit of fun, and was absolutely horrified and completely triggered by it - as a domestic abuse survivor it literally portrayed domestic violence polished wrapped up in luxury and money and Hollywood, and I was so astonished that I had never heard anyone talk about this. I hadn't thought about beauty and the beast before but you're so right. That used to be my favourite film as a kid... Says a lot now with hindsight!
Given all the lawsuits flying back-&-forth between Baldoni and Lively, I can’t imagine why I’d want to see it; even on HBO, when it finally gets there. Baldoni strikes me as an ass.
I'm a Domestic Abuse Survivor from a 5 year relationship. I typically struggle to watch movies where DV is the storyline or part of it for many reasons. After reading this, I'm glad I've chosen to stay away from this movie because I'd probably get irritated.
Not only did my ex come close to killing my daughter and I many times in our relationship, he also stalked me and people around me after we escaped. It took a decade of therapy to become a normal human being with experiences like this in my past.
Simply just walking away and dude is fine with her doing so? Ya, not realistic at all.
I’m glad you have said this. But why haven’t more people week how downright dangerous it is to promote this reality-free depiction of DV to young women. And at with the rise in misogyny too? We are going to end up with so many more fatalities.
Update: I found this New York Times analysis, which is much better than their movie review:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/21/movies/it-ends-with-us-domestic-violence.html
A compelling quote: “If people identify that they are in abusive relationships and then after having watched this movie have courage to leave, some will end up being killed. Many will end up without their children. Many will end up homeless and depressed, and most will have PTSD,” she said, referring to post-traumatic stress disorder.
THIS is what I found most distressing about this movie- not a peep about how dangerous it is to walk away from an abuser.
My ex once threatened to have me killed after I left him. I didn't react. But I went straight to the police station. They asked me if I thought he really meant it. I actually didn't, he was a bully who was trying to intimidate me. I just wanted a record of the threat.
They said if I put in a formal complaint they'd have to arrest him and told me to lodge the incident with a lawyer.
Looking back I wish I'd had it in me at the time to have him arrested but I didn't. If it were now I wouldn't hesitate.
Surely for any given abuser, the more dangerous it is to leave, then the more dangerous it is not to leave.
In theory yes, I agree with you. But the reality is that many abused women do not have the resources to ensure safety and are more likely to be more deeply harmed by their enraged abuser by leaving than if they stayed.
I can tell you from experience from living with an abuser that they chip away at your self esteem day by day and emotionally abuse you into believing that you are a worthless human being whose fault it is for their loss of control. Imagine years of this. It's very hard to find the courage to leave.
What gave me the courage was the realization that if I didn't my daughters would grow up believing that this is how men treat women. There was a day when my youngest daughter, at age four, after her father threw a thermos of boiling water at me, told me he didn't mean it to be hot. That was the moment I knew I had to leave.
I had very little support because my family was overseas. If I had known how difficult it would be I'd never have had the courage to do it.
But I did do it and my daughters had the empowering example of walking away from abuse. And they don't take any from anyone.
I agree it can be difficult to leave and I congratulate you on doing so.
But that doesn’t change my point that on every point along your journey, the safest immediate option would have been to leave. Every city in the West has women’s refuges.
Let's agree to disagree. Without support beyond women's refuges it is very hard to begin again.
In fact, reading back on what you said and reflecting on the events in my own life it would certainly not have been safest to leave at every point along my journey. I would have put my children at risk without having a secure, safe longer term alternative to a refuge.
It's very easy to judge from the outside without having personal experience of what was involved. I left when I knew I was in a position to care properly for my children.
I've read one other very negative review of this movie, also by a woman. I've never read Colleen Hoover, but many of my former students (teen moms) have and do. They often romanticized their boyfriends' jealousy as proof of deep love, no matter how hard our counselor tried to dispute it. I think in some twisted way, if they got hit, it was another evidence of the boyfriend's strong feeling (love?). In some cases, it was just the way the men in their family behaved, too. I'm with you. Authors and movie producers need to stop perpetuating untruths about domestic violence. It too often ends in murder.
Wow! I never thought about how vulnerable teen girls might rationalize this. That’s an excellent point for further discussion.
Yes. I might deal with teen domestic violence in a future post. Our girls were particularly susceptible to it because many of them are desperate for love and don't recognize real examples of it.
Heartbreaking. I look forward to your insights.
I remember back in the sixties there was a song called something like, "Johnny, show me that you care for me!" Look it up! It's a little fuzzy to remember, but the verses talked about the girl flirting with another guy, or another guy flirting with her, and she wants to see how her boyfriend Johnny would react. The chorus is something like: "Johnny get angry, Johnny get mad; give me the biggest lecture I ever had. I want a cave man; I want a brave man. Johnny show me that you care, really care for me."
Being the victim of domestic violence, this song makes me ill. And I definitely won't watch the movie. I once ran crying from a lecture where a video was shown about domestic violence which showed a man doing something to the woman that my ex had done to me. My ex was well-respected in the community, and no one would've believed me if I'd gone to our friends. He was "a great guy" who everybody loved. Through Co-Dependents Anonymous, Al-Anon, and therapy, I am now at peace and have a happy life, but I still feel the sting when something like this comes up. It's for real, people, and it's everywhere, where you least expect it.
I'm so sorry you went through this. I agree public perception of male jealousy and macho behavior is romanticized in ways that are cruel to DV victims (all women, really). I'm glad you've found helpful practices that bring you to a more peaceful place. Wishing you all the best going forward.
I would also like to add in my own personal horrific history being an abused woman. When you call the police for help after a domestic violence situation, if you have children who happen to have been there to witness it, the cops will turn BOTH OF YOUR NAMES into child protective services and they will subsequently punish you both. I got punched right in the face by my ex husband and called the police for help but then had to fight child neglect charges from CPS. This has happened to so many women that many are actually afraid to report their abusers at all.
I'm so sorry. The system is so broken.
It really truly is. One of the pro bono lawyers who helped me in that case told me straight out that Texas CPS systems were set up to be woman punishing machines.
*America* is set up to be a woman punishing machine.
This is horrible! I'm so sorry you experienced this. Things get really complicated when authorities get involved. It's like they don't know who to blame, so they blame everyone. All best.
They know who to blame, but we live in a patriarchy so they blame the woman instead.
Until men are raised to see women as people first, there will always be men who think they can use their physical strength to get what they want and as a means of expressing their own uncontrolled emotional issues.
The issues around domestic violence are so misunderstood. As a former social worker and a paralegal who worked exclusively in family law, there are 2 extremes - the women who watched too much Oprah who think an argument with their husband in which he insults her intelligent is abuse worthy of legal and law enforcement intervention - and those who don’t even see how they are abused. I’ve seen professional career women whose husbands know exactly how many minutes it takes them to drive home from work, as well as women whose partners have set them on fire. Even if a woman wants to leave, the logistics are overwhelming. Where do I go? How will the kids get to school? The shelter won’t let me bring my pets. How will I support myself if I can’t get to work or have to take time off? All my papers are still at the house. I can only stay at the shelter for 30 days. He’s not afraid of going to jail if he violates the restraining order, and they’ll just release him anyway. Everyone told me he was bad news, and I’m so ashamed that they were right.
We’re not even getting to the psychological and emotional issues that brought these women to this point, or the struggle it will take to understand how they got there, and to extricate themselves. Or the legal system, that struggles with maintaining the constitutional rights in a situation that has huge social elements and in many states, is handled in family courts as a civil matter rather than criminal.
It’s better than it was, but it still puts the onus and the pressure on the victim. It took more than a few weeks for a woman to become a victim of abuse. How many times do women end up going back again and again to their abusers?
Yes. A woman has more rights and power when she's attacked by a stranger than by her husband. Thank you for commenting!
NYS has an “Integrated Domestic Violence Court” where cases of DV that also result in assault or other criminal charges are heard in one court & prosecuted by a DA. That way each matter isn’t handled separately and the judge has the power to impose a criminal sentence, which family court does not. It’s easier on the victim who isn’t dealing w/ a DA, and her own lawyer in family court, or have multiple court appearances. Only the most serious cases are transferred there.
I have not, nor will I watch this movie. Nothing I had read remotely indicated this would be an accurate depiction of domestic violence. I am, however, glued to the drama surrounding the movie, and did read Blake Lively’s full legal complaint that included documents about the marketing strategy for the movie. They basically wanted to avoid talking about domestic violence in the promotion of the movie and instead wanted to convey how it was a story about hope. I have to think whomever made that decision is regretting, because it seems like a colossal FU.
I think I saw it mentioned that they thought abusers would not let their victims see this movie if they really knew what it was about. Most abusers are male, have absorbed and internalized the toxic manifestations of "masculinity" and thus immediately write off rom-coms as "girly shit." They thought more women would be able to "receive the message" of this movie that way. I think that's even why Blake Lively "promoted" her hair care line in press interviews, to make herself seem like a fluffy, self-interested, self-promoting starlet. I don't know her, but despite the unhelpfulness and unreality of the actual film, it seemed that her motivations for being part of this film project were well-intentioned.
The thing about purposely making the pressers "lite" on cultural relevance to try to get more people to go to the film, while it seemed helpful, victims of intimate partner abuse, domestic violence, whatever we prefer to call it, are not likely to have eye-opening revelations about their situation from watching ANY film or documentary about it. Not even if they're told they're likely to be murdered by a Harvard statistician. Why? Because they have already formulated the reasons and justifications they need to stay, and even if the only reason is fear, that reason can't be invalidated when it's reasonable to understand that a person would do what they believe will help them remain alive under immense strain, fear and suffering rather than take an action they believe would lead to their life ending.
It would be well to remember that even though the victims, who are mostly women and are statistically at risk of being murdered by their partners, do not want to be murdered and when they are murdered, they didn't stay because they thought they'd be murdered—they stayed because they were likely made to believe by their partners that their partners would murder them if they DID leave or tried to leave.
Liane Moriarty wrote a novel about intimate partner abuse, Big Little Lies. I didn't read the book but I watched some of the show. It was, imo, a more realistic demonstration (than It Ends a with Us) of how such violence escalates over time and how there can be a tidal-like shifting power dynamic between the abuser and the victim that helps make the victims feel like their cyclically abusive relationship is not as dangerous as it really is. Sometimes, not all the time, abusers express regret and remorse for their abusive episodes (whether it is genuine or contrived, we don't know and can't say), and resume love-bomb behavior, and power is momentarily given to the victim in accepting it.
Nicole Kidman's character went to a therapist and the therapist, knowing she had the means to do so, told her to get an apartment secretly, furnish it, be ready to go there with her children without notice or warning because their lives were at risk. The realest part was when she and us, the viewers, had the same visceral reaction of fear at learning that her husband had found out she was planning to leave him. The moment literally induced a cold wash of my insides and my neck hairs prickled because the way he found out was so simple and the way he revealed it was so innocuous sounding, and we, as the viewers, seeing her secret ordeal, knew what that actually meant for her despite his reasonable words. That moment was real.
I recently read The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. I think that also was a flawed but better portrayal of domestic violence than It Ends With Us. It realistically showed how it's often extended through multiple generations of families partially because the shame of it prevents family members from having meaningful discussions about the impact of the violence they suffer AND dispense. Often the abusers were abused. That is tragic, too.
You mirror my feelings on this movie, thank you.
The hardest thing is that unless you have lived domestic violence, you can’t explain it to the outside ‘normal’ world. It is the loneliest feeling. Seeing a movie like this diminishes the truth behind this issue.
Yes, so many forms of trauma are isolating, and so often movies/media don't get it right.
Thank you for this review! So glad someone said this. sighs relief Yes, I watched the movie and I too was horrified by the stereo types it perpetuated. I’ve experienced and left a violent relationship with my children, and I found nothing in this movie that resembled reality. For over ten years I have worked for a social service organization directly with those impacted by and/or fleeing domestic violence so I live this every day of my life, and I’m sick of media and court systems and a patriarchal culture that contributes to the harm. We need the truth not glossed up fairytales. Fyi, having a baby and driving off into the sunset proclaiming it ends here doesn’t actually change things.
Fantastic takedown of the movie - agree 100%. Thank you for painting a picture of the reality of domestic violence - not an easy problem to solve, and typically no peaceful, easy goodbyes from the abuser. Thank you for this analysis. And I'm so sorry for the abuse in your family - it happened in mine too. These cycles are hard to break. Sending hugs...
Thank you for taking a stand, Joy. While I have lot been a victim of domestic violence, I did spend almost a year photographing women and their male abusers, as well as advocates for series of stories. The situations were complex and varied and dangerous, even/especially after the women left. I didn’t bother reading the book because I kept hearing how poorly written it was. After this post, I won’t bother to watch the movie. And how ironic the lead actor is accused of sexual harassment.
Yes, the lead actor was also the producer, I think? So one has to wonder if he's why the movie turned out so fluffy.
I agree! That story/movie was crap. And apparently so is the real life drama between stars.
It Ends With Us not reading any more bad books that get optioned into bad movies.
ha! i hope!
Joy, love and agree with your take on the movie. I think it speaks to the general public's perverse appetite for -and conflation of- dominance/control as a form of romance that we should all be so lucky to find. I mean, think about Beauty and the Beast! Belle was held captive and then fell in love with the guy (beast..?). We've been fed these narratives for sooo long. And none of it is helpful for the 1 in 3 women who experience some form of sexual and/or physical abuse (I suspect the number is higher but that is just what is reported).
Another fantastic book on DV is "See what you made me do" by Jess Hill. Highly recommend.
I absolutely agree. I watched 50 shades of grey a couple of years ago (late to the party I know), think it'd be a bit of fun, and was absolutely horrified and completely triggered by it - as a domestic abuse survivor it literally portrayed domestic violence polished wrapped up in luxury and money and Hollywood, and I was so astonished that I had never heard anyone talk about this. I hadn't thought about beauty and the beast before but you're so right. That used to be my favourite film as a kid... Says a lot now with hindsight!
Given all the lawsuits flying back-&-forth between Baldoni and Lively, I can’t imagine why I’d want to see it; even on HBO, when it finally gets there. Baldoni strikes me as an ass.
I'm a Domestic Abuse Survivor from a 5 year relationship. I typically struggle to watch movies where DV is the storyline or part of it for many reasons. After reading this, I'm glad I've chosen to stay away from this movie because I'd probably get irritated.
Not only did my ex come close to killing my daughter and I many times in our relationship, he also stalked me and people around me after we escaped. It took a decade of therapy to become a normal human being with experiences like this in my past.
Simply just walking away and dude is fine with her doing so? Ya, not realistic at all.
Thank you for sharing, and I am so sorry.
Haha thanks! Certainly won’t watch that absurdity!!!
I’m glad you have said this. But why haven’t more people week how downright dangerous it is to promote this reality-free depiction of DV to young women. And at with the rise in misogyny too? We are going to end up with so many more fatalities.