Advocate Alexandra Hunt argues “It Ends With Us” is an inaccurate portrayal of domestic violence, and that Blake Lively should hand over the mic.
By now, the whole internet has long been abuzz with criticism of the flower-filled press tour for “It Ends With Us”, an adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s novel of the same name in which Blake Lively stars as Lily Bloom, who experiences an abusive relationship at the hands of neurosurgeon Ryle (played by Justin Baldoni). But unlike some survivors, it didn’t bother me that the film was marketed as a romance movie. My story started out as a romance, too — dancing together in the kitchen, talking in bed into the wee hours in the morning, laughing so hard my stomach hurt. All the things two people do when they’re falling madly, deeply in love. The first time he hurt me was barely a blip on my radar. I remember staring at my swollen wrist and thinking, It was just an accident and my wrists have always been weak. The excuses got bigger and more outlandish every time he hurt me, and they lasted for more than a year.
But leaving isn’t easy when you’ve become financially dependent on the same person who is oozing his way into all the nooks and crannies of your life, making you smaller and smaller until you can only imagine fitting neatly into his world and start forgetting that you once had a life of your own. Financial abuse is present in 99 percent of domestic violence cases, according to the National Network to End Domestic Violence, but in “It Ends With Us”, Lily is able to flounce her way out of a hospitalization, into her own apartment, and prepare to have a baby on her own. And research has shown domestic violence is more common among pregnant women than preeclampsia or gestational diabetes, yet pregnancy and a newborn are what set Lily free.
Perhaps the most absurd part of the movie happens in the hospital, when Ryle holds his newborn daughter and Lily says, “I need to know what you would say to our daughter if the man she loves with all her heart ever hurts her.
