MOVIE REVIEW
What do you do when someone you love gets hurt?
If the wound is physical, you might try to patch them up or even call an ambulance if the injury is more serious. If the wound is emotional, you might try to understand the problem—to be a shoulder to cry on.
But what if your loved one doesn’t want to share their pain? What if they can’t talk about it?
And what do you do when the one you love, who is obviously hurting, starts to hurt you too?
Do you keep trying to understand? Do you let them patch you up?
Lily doesn’t know. She loves her husband, Ryle. But he keeps hurting her. He claims it was an accident, and he apologizes profusely. But Lily can’t help but wonder:
Was it really an accident? Or is she just conditioned to accept abuse after watching it in her own parents’ abusive marriage?
POSITIVE ELEMENTS
[Note: Spoilers are contained in this section.]
It Ends with Us takes the stance that abuse in a relationship is unacceptable. But it also sympathizes with victims who are unable, for one reason or another, to leave their abusers. Decisions are made to end the cycle of abuse in Lily’s family. However, nobody here is painted as a monster.
Ryle experienced a severe childhood trauma. It changed him forever. It doesn’t excuse his behavior, but it does explain it. And he eventually recognizes that he needs to get some help and change.
Lily and Ryle’s sister, Allysa, both love Ryle, perhaps even forgiving him. But neither woman can forget the damage that’s been done. They make decisions to protect Lily that ultimately affect Lily and Ryle’s marriage.
Several people reassure a pregnant woman in a bad spot that she’ll be a great mom. That same woman sets boundaries to protect herself and her child. Her husband accepts these boundaries, wanting to protect their child, too.
Flashbacks show a teenage Lily giving food, clothes and other supplies to a homeless classmate, Atlas. The pair eventually falls in love, but circumstances drive the two of them apart. And as adults, Atlas protects Lily and provides a safe place for her to stay after learning about the abuse in her marriage.
SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS
None.
SEXUAL CONTENT
Upon first meeting, Ryle invites Lily to bed. She insists she’s not a “casual sex” person. However, she allows Ryle to “see how far he can get.” Things get very sensual, but before they can even kiss, Ryle is called in to work. (He’s a surgeon.)
The two of them don’t see each other for several months, but when they do, Ryle immediately begins flirting and trying to convince Lily to go to bed with him. Lily declines, not interested in anything but friendship. However, they strip to their underwear and snuggle in bed together. The next day, Ryle asks Lily to date him, indicating that he is ready for a serious relationship based on love, not sex.
After dating for a while, things do turn sexual. We don’t see nudity or the act itself, but close-up camera angles focus on underwear-clad bodies and passionate kisses leading up to sex.
That theme of sensuality continues throughout the film. Female characters often wear formfitting, revealing outfits. Couples kiss frequently. Lily and Ryle eventually marry.
Flashbacks show intense sensuality between a teenage Lily and Atlas. Clothes come off (down to their underwear), and they hop into bed together. Lily tells Atlas she has a condom from health class. The camera cuts before they begin the deed. We hear that this is Lily’s first time but not Atlas’. It’s perhaps implied that Lily doesn’t have another sexual experience until she meets Ryle.
Although Atlas is still in love with Lily as an adult, he never tries to woo her. He urges her to leave Ryle after learning of the abuse, but he recognizes that Lily is in a vulnerable position.
We see a woman’s bare belly and thighs as she gives birth in a hospital. Someone asks a man if he’s interested in men or women. There are jokes about sex workers and pornography.
VIOLENT CONTENT
[Note: Spoilers are contained in this section.]
It Ends with Us, as already mentioned, takes a stance against domestic violence. That said, the film contains quite a bit of this content, so sensitive readers may want to avoid details about that behavior that follow.
Ryle attempts to remove a burning dish from the oven with his bare hands. Lily rushes to stop him, but it’s too late. He drops the dish and burns himself badly. In the commotion, Lily gets hit in the eye hard, and she falls to the ground. Ryle immediately apologizes, falling to the ground himself and cutting his hand on broken glass.
Later, Lily sports a black eye, which she tries to cover up with makeup. Allysa is shocked by her friend’s state but accepts the story that it was an accident. However, when Atlas sees Lily’s eye and Ryle’s bandaged hand, he draws the conclusion that Ryle must have hit Lily. He tells Lily to leave Ryle. And when Ryle learns who Atlas is, the two men get into a fistfight.
A few months later, Atlas visits Lily’s flower shop. He apologizes for the fight but still won’t accept that Lily’s black eye was an accident. He writes his number on a card and hides it in Lily’s phone case, telling her to call him if she ever needs help. Lily insists she won’t, and Atlas hopes it’s true.
Several months after that, Ryle finds the number in Lily’s case after dropping her phone. He smashes a lamp (offscreen) in anger. Lily tries to explain, but Ryle won’t listen. He storms out of their apartment into the stairwell. Lily follows, begging Ryle to come back. Next thing she knows, Lily is lying on her bed with a bleeding cut on her head. Ryle, who is a neurosurgeon, patches her up, telling her she fell down the stairs. However, after checking her for a concussion, he doesn’t take her to the hospital (the audience’s first clue that all may not be as it seems).
The story climaxes after Lily’s flower shop and Atlas’ restaurant are both featured in a “Best of Boston” article. It should have been a time to celebrate Lily’s achievement, but Ryle is overcome with jealousy after reading about Atlas’ restaurant. He realizes that Atlas is still in love with Lily and that the restaurant’s name was inspired by her (even though the two have not had contact since Lily was in high school).
Ryle gets sexually aggressive with Lily, kissing her forcefully as she asks him repeatedly to stop. He pins her down on the couch, still kissing her even as she visibly panics and begs him to stop. He bites her on her collarbone where a tattoo he suspects is related to Atlas is located, drawing blood and bruising her badly.
Lily manages to get away before things progress further. And then flashbacks tell us the whole story. Lily was repressing memories. She didn’t accidentally get knocked in the eye: Ryle smacked her in anger. She didn’t slip down the stairs: Ryle grabbed her and shoved her. Lily remembers the day she met Ryle. He kicked a chair in frustration after a bad surgery. She realizes he has anger problems and has been taking them out on her.
Lily is taken to the hospital by a friend, where she declines a sexual assault forensic exam. Ryle did not rape her or try to, she says. It’s at this juncture that the doctor tells her they don’t want to x-ray the bite mark to check for a broken collarbone because Lily is pregnant.
Lily’s friend briefly mentions the possibility of an abortion, but Lily chooses to keep her baby. And after struggling for months, she finally asks Ryle for a divorce, asking him what he would do if their baby girl came home and told him that her husband had done the same things to her that Ryle had done to Lily.
Further flashbacks throughout the film show that Lily is not the first victim of domestic abuse. Her dad beat her mom frequently. She witnesses it in action. Footage of Ryle pinning down Lily is cut with footage of her dad treating her mom in a similar manner.
Atlas knew about Lily’s parents. He helped her through it. And after Lily’s dad caught the teens in bed, he beat Atlas to within an inch of his life. Lily never saw him again after he was driven away by an ambulance, heavily bleeding.
We learn that when Ryle was 6, he accidentally shot and killed his older brother. He didn’t know the gun was real, but it changed Ryle forever. An adult Ryle tells Lily he was unable to save a boy who was shot in a similar manner.
Atlas tells Lily that when they were kids, he was planning to kill himself. However, Lily’s kindness toward him, giving him food and clothes, changed his mind. He claims she saved his life.
We hear a woman allowed several of her boyfriends to beat her teenage son and that she eventually kicked her son out in favor of one of the boyfriends.
A man asks a woman sitting on the edge of a roof to climb down because she’s making him nervous that she’ll fall.
CRUDE OR PROFANE LANGUAGE
There are more than 10 uses of the s-word and a few each of “a–” and “d–n.”
Jesus’ name is abused twice, and God’s name is misused 30 times, three times paired with “d–n.”
DRUG AND ALCOHOL CONTENT
People drink and smoke throughout the film, usually at parties.
OTHER NEGATIVE ELEMENTS
Lily attends her father’s funeral. However, she’s unable to deliver the eulogy—her mom told Lily to list five things she loved about her dad—because she had a strained relationship with him. She never got over how her dad treated her mom. And Lily resented him after he also beat up the guy she loved. She later admits she didn’t try to make it home before her dad died because she didn’t want to see him.
Lily tells Ryle about her past with Atlas. However, she lies about the origin of a tattoo, which was inspired by Atlas. In the moment, it seems she just wants to keep that part of her life private since Atlas was the only one who knew about her history with her dad. However, when Ryle asks about it again later, she lies again. And this time it seems she’s scared of Ryle’s reaction if he knew the truth.
A homeless teen’s classmates mock him because of his body odor. (He’s unable to shower because of his situation, but his classmates are unsympathetic.)
CONCLUSION
It Ends with Us should probably come with a trigger warning for victims of domestic abuse—or even children of those victims. This is not an easy film to watch. The themes are sympathetic but incredibly heavy. And viewers who perhaps thought this film was a light romcom should beware: It is anything but.
We witness violence against women at the hands of their spouses. A teenage boy also becomes a victim. And the film explores why one woman chooses to stay with her husband while another struggles with the decision to leave.
It Ends with Us is also incredibly sensual. There’s no nudity, and sex is left largely offscreen. But passionate buildups leave little to the imagination, including some flashbacks to a teenager’s first sexual experience.
Language is perhaps the last big hurdle here. We hear a smattering of profanities across the board, including several uses of the s-word.
Some potential viewers may be interested in what this film has to say about domestic violence. You or someone you know may be searching for answers to the questions I listed at the beginning of this review. But readers, I would urge caution. It Ends with Us doesn’t explore this topic from a Christian perspective. The answers you’re looking for probably won’t be found in this film or the book it’s based on.
And considering the film’s heavy content (both in terms of violence and in sensuality), it’s not even necessarily a film you’d want to watch for entertainment purposes.