Abusive Parents, Lovers and Daddy Issues

IT ENDS WITH US is a romantic film about a florist and an ultra-successful neurosurgeon and how their modern fairy tale goes awry as their past catches up with them. It’s also about deceptive first impressions, the brevity of those and how the masks begin to fall off with time, like a pipe leaking water in tiny drops at first, finally gushing out in torrents. It’s also about troubled childhood and abusive parents. Most importantly, the film exposes the insecurity that follows every step of the people who had lived under the shadows of abusive parents and a dysfunctional family, experienced childhood trauma and had to face the consequences despite their attempts to alleviate the condition. The subtext of this film explores the complexities of mental health and its symptoms of self-sabotaging and hurting others, especially those close to them.
Blake Lively, of Gossip Girl fame, stars as Lily Blooms in the film, and Justin Baldoni plays a neurosurgeon heartthrob. They are the Executive Producer and Director of this film, respectively. The stakes for their careers are personally high in this film. The film reflects their commitment, hard work, and creative collaboration, and it shows.
I will skip the nuts and bolts of the film and highlight the message that underlies this beautifully made film. The cinematography is dreamlike; the soundtracks match the emotional rollercoasters. As for the mental disorders that afflict the male protagonist, which primarily defines the arcs of the bittersweet romance, it is his pathological behaviours that frighten his newly wedded wife, compelling her to say, “I want a divorce.” The production values are beyond the usual standard of the assembly line commercial film industry. Each object, each petal of a flower, like the design of the shop that Lily Blooms owns, the decora of the sets and places, and the bokeh lights at the momentous scenes in the film are made for spectacle and teenagers to swoon over and make them longing for their own. This film is pure Hollywood glitter at its peak, albeit its gloomy undertones.
This Hollywood eye candy rests on the bestselling novel, It Ends with Us, by Colleen Hoover, arguably the JK Rowlings of the chicklit genre. The film oozes with the author’s trademark dialogues, and she even has a cameo appearance in a dinner party scene reminding me of M. Night Shyamlan’s habit of appearing in the movies directed by him. Her novel is semi-autobiographical. Hoover’s real-life story may not be rags-to-riches, but it is definitely a rugged-to-rosy one thanks to her success as a bestselling novelist, and now this hit film adaptation. Hers is a theme reminiscent of the saying that when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. The lemon is the aggressive father whose lemons are too acerbic for his wife.
The messages from this film, however, are not to be gloated over. These are serious and worthy of mainstream discourse. First, the childhood experience never goes away. Lily Blooms cannot shake off memories of the abuses and the controlling behaviour of his father, particularly towards her mother. The authoritarian father imposed his whims on the family and restricted Lily’s freedom while growing up. Her father, furious at finding her boyfriend in his house, beat him up cruelly. The girl and the boy had to part ways due to her father’s disapproval, but not without longing for each other ever since.
On the other hand, when Lily met Justin and became the new man and his life partner shortly after, she thought she had left the past behind and the memory of her distant beau would fade. But as Sigmund Freud would have predicted, the new perfect husband turned out to be a person battling his own childhood trauma; he having killed his brother while just seven in an accident with a real gun. His guilt and repressed anger finally exploded in the form of reflexive physical assaults against Lily during unguarded moments, first in the kitchen, at a restaurant, followed by frequent such episodes that revealed to be a pattern, not an exception. Lily decided to end the cycle of abuse.
Lily also seems to suffer from daddy issues, the popular term for women who grew up insecure with unconcerned fathers and gravitate towards men who are like their fathers in trying to emulate their mothers’ experience.
In conclusion, the film is entertaining and perfect for a date. It may even be educational and serve as a silent warning to your date that nothing good ever comes out by hiding the past or suppressing its demons. The lesson for the parents is to provide their kids with a safe and warm environment and authoritative guidance, not micro supervision, to let them flourish with love, care, and fair rules. Once children are wounded psychologically, they will often continue to be damaged goods for life. Like father, like son. For female offspring, lousy parenting, especially by the absent father, leads to commitment and compulsive issues, which often go undiagnosed, posing challenges in maintaining a healthy and normal relationship with men. And let’s not get started with the in-laws in this already complicated business of relationships. So, do no harm. Keep your family safe. Otherwise, the ghosts from the past will never die and haunt you for life.