It Ends With Us
Spoiler Alert and Content Warning*
By Laura Varelas Arroyo, PowerBack Manager
After much anticipation about the release of It Ends With Us, a film based on the book by Colleen Hoover which famously depicts an abusive relationship based on her own parents, the PowerBack Team brought some of our PowerBack Teen Advocates to see the movie. There has been a lot of buzz surrounding this movie from gossip about internal conflict between some of the cast to the concerns about promoting this film as a love story instead of a story about domestic violence.
Had I not known anything about the topic of domestic violence, I, like most movie-goers would have thought that this was a romance about a woman who reconnects with her high school sweetheart. More than half of the movie was centered around Lily (Blake Lively’s character) falling in love with her abuser Ryle (played by Justin Baldoni) and a quick second half was centered around the abusive events. There was very little lead-up to the physical abuse, which we know is inaccurate (most abusive relationships start with emotional abuse and end with physical abuse). One minute they were in love sharing multiple intimate scenes together, followed by her ex coming back into her life, and then he [her husband] started abusing her due to his jealousy. After they separate, she finds out that she is pregnant. Lily, whose parents were also in an abusive relationship, has no internal struggle on whether or not to leave Ryle, another inaccuracy; we know that there are lots of reasons why victims stay in abusive relationships and that it takes an average of seven times for a victim to leave.
When their daughter is born at the hospital, Lily asks Ryle for a divorce that same day. After a two-second conversation, Ryle agrees. This is one of the biggest travesties of the movie. The idea that an abuser would agree to a divorce in a matter of one easy conversation is nonsensical. Leaving is the most dangerous time in any abusive relationship because abusers lose control over their victims and the risk for lethality skyrockets during the break-up process. In real life, Ryle would have never agreed so easily to this, and Lily may have been seriously hurt or killed.
But this isn’t real life, this is just a movie. One that has been a hit at the box office, and that has made millions by advertising this to adults and teens as a romance. I can appreciate creative expression and fully understand that there is a process to make a hit movie. In this case, however, it seems that there was no effort by producers into making sure that victims’ voices were heard. Because the reality is, when a victim makes the decision to leave, there is no handsome ex-boyfriend to come to their rescue. Victims face so many obstacles when leaving abusive relationships such as financial struggles, lack of resources, isolation from friends and family, emotional attachment, and their children’s well-being. Not portraying any of these struggles is irresponsible, especially knowing that young teens are the target audience for this movie.
Even more careless than all of that is that when the movie ended, there was not one resource shared and I truly found this to be shocking after subjecting an audience to some visually abusive scenes. I can guarantee that there are hundreds of current victims seeing this who may be inspired to leave or former victims who need to talk to someone. So many people were touched by Colleen Hoover’s book and enjoyed the movie. Domestic violence doesn’t always get the attention it deserves so any platform where there is an opportunity to affect change is always welcome among advocates in the field. Having the National Domestic Violence Hotline at the end prior to the credits start would have made a big difference in connecting victims to services.
The PowerBack Teen Advocates who saw the movie shared similar concerns that we did, but they’ve been given so much education on the topic. They all felt strongly that there should have been a content warning at the beginning of the movie as well.
We don’t expect Hollywood to fix all the problems in the world or even make a movie that perfectly encapsulates the survivor experience, but when they have such a platform to call attention to an issue as pervasive as domestic violence, they simply must do better. Love is not abuse. Providing just one resource can save someone’s life. Education is prevention. And a movie that had so much potential to be a change for good really missed the mark here. Because when we give young people the proper tools to identify abuse and stop it before it happens, a new generation can truly say that domestic violence and dating abuse “ends with us.”