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In recent years, popular movies have staked their claims to attention mainly with fantasy and spectacle. As a result, Hollywood has been neglecting one of its most important classic genres: romantic melodrama. It’s an odd genre because it’s got irony built into it, with the grand emotional pitch of tragedy ever at risk of being undercut or even ridiculed by workaday settings. The canonical melodramas—such as “Only Yesterday,” “A Life of Her Own,” and “All That Heaven Allows”—don’t shy away from these contradictions but press them to the breaking point, and that’s also true of a new, worthy entry into the genre, “It Ends with Us.” It may not rival the great exemplars in directorial invention or thematic complexity, but it does follow in their footsteps—sometimes timidly, sometimes with an admirable audacity.
The movie, adapted from the eponymous novel by Colleen Hoover and directed by Justin Baldoni, follows Lily Bloom (Blake Lively), a woman from a small Maine town who has moved to Boston to fulfill her lifelong dream of opening a flower shop. (Yes, she is well aware of her name’s comic potential, especially as her middle name is Blossom.) Her preparations are interrupted by the death of her father, at whose funeral she can’t bring herself to speak. Flashbacks to her teen years (in which Lily is played by Isabela Ferrer) explain why. Her father (Kevin McKidd) physically abused her mother (Amy Morton), and, when he caught Lily in bed with a boyfriend, the sumptuously named Atlas Corrigan (Alex Neustaedter), he beat the boy savagely.
Back in Boston after the funeral, the melancholy Lily cute-meets an ambitious young neurosurgeon, Ryle Kincaid (played by Baldoni). The scene—sparked by the pair’s instant mutual attraction but laced with an undertone of menace—features some sharp-edged dialogue, in which Lily speaks with wry candor of her romantic past and Ryle unabashedly describes himself as a love-averse serial seducer. (The script is by Christy Hall, but Lively credits this scene’s dialogue to her husband, Ryan Reynolds.) Lily soon opens her flower store, hiring an eager assistant named Allysa (Jenny Slate), through whom she meets Allysa’s husband, Marshall (Hasan Minhaj), and her brother—none other than Ryle. I don’t dare divulge how that double connection plays into, or perhaps against, Lily’s relationship with Ryle; or how (of course) Atlas (now played by Brandon Sklenar) comes back into her life; or how her traumatic childhood memories color her adult love life.
The complications proliferate even as the movie sticks to one relentless through line—the looming threat of violent abuse—ratcheted up to white heat by the ardor of the romantic relationships over which it hovers. The many coincidences and unlikely accidents on which the story depends verge on the ridiculous yet serve as a secular metaphysics—a cosmic reinforcement of inevitability, a middle-class version of fate. Baldoni, as a director, manifests an intensity that matches his smoldering severity when in front of the camera, starkly highlighting sudden visual revelations (including that ultra-classical trope, a scar that sparks recognition) in a way that lends ordinary life a heightened, quasi-operatic sublimity of gesture. His commitment to the story and characters is unmistakable, and he elicits performances of tautly focussed, high-relief earnestness from his fellow cast members.
The casting of Slate and Minhaj is inspired: melodrama, thanks to its borderline absurdity, requires an acting style not far from that of comedy, with febrile energy, confessional fervor, and an ability to let underlying ironies emerge without winking at the audience. Meanwhile, the two male leads, Baldoni and Sklenar, give performances that are superbly one-note—the former all vehemence and volatility, the latter all warmth—providing a basic dramatic dichotomy within which Lively can maneuver. Lively, above all, is made for melodrama: even at her most wryly self-aware, there’s something inherently regal, even haughty, about her bearing. Her Lily acts like she’s special but knows that she’s not, careening through life as if meant for greatness and carrying a sense of secret destiny in her sly smile while negotiating the same minefield of daily complications and intimate quandaries as everyone else—including, of course, her viewers, who get to identify their own passions with her grandeur. Baldoni shrewdly showcases Lively’s performance with the classic device of the closeup, with shot after shot holding her face in the frame long enough to show thought in motion.
These virtues give “It Ends with Us” an emotional kick reminiscent of the iconic Hollywood melodramas but can’t equal their substantive delights, for a reason that soon becomes painfully obvious. What’s missing are characterization and context. The people in the film have no traits beside those which the plot demands—no discernible religion or politics or cultural interests. There’s plenty of dialogue, and it often strikes the plot points from odd angles or with appealing spin, but the characters never really talk about their lives. This void is built into the framework of the drama, which skips from dramatic scene to dramatic scene with no in-between times, no moments in which characters can share confidences or reflect on the world around them.
Ryle has his own traumas (sh-h-h), but he seems never to have had, or considered, therapy; same goes for Lily, who, by the way, apparently has no friends, no one even to talk to—until the brash Allysa comes into her life. And what about money? How much does Lily pay Allysa? What did Lily do before opening the store? Where did she get the funds to rent the storefront and buy the needed supplies? What does she know about running a business? Who handles the books? Most of the movie happens by hand-wave; and what, most significantly, gets waved away is the wide realm of social connections on which the protagonist’s daily life depends, the foundation of thought and principle that’s at work in the drama.
In the great melodramas of Douglas Sirk, or of John M. Stahl, even secondary characters tend to bring philosophical reflections into the story, creating a standpoint from which to analyze the action and giving heroes and heroines a goal that’s not just practical but also ideal. Poor Lily, however, has neither history nor philosophy, neither an artistic touchstone nor an intellectual compass to help her on her road to fulfillment and in her confrontation with inner and outer dangers. It’s as if a filmmaker’s quest for dramatic universality has deprived his characters of their particulars, has pulled them out of time and space and rendered them all too abstract. What remains is a mechanism of thrilling power that’s missing a touch of mere humanity. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
