Blake Lively in an adaptation by Colleen Hoover

It is fitting that we meet Lily Bloom, the charming but thinly written protagonist of It ends with usmarches out of a church. Beneath the surface of big smiles and laughter lies a steely determination. The young woman drove from Boston to her hometown in Maine for her father’s funeral. The event turned into a tense affair that ended with Lily, who was scheduled to deliver the eulogy, leaving the service altogether. Despite her mother’s earlier pleas, the young woman has no kind words to say about her father. She can’t list five things she liked about him.

The root of this tension is later explored in this successful adaptation of the popular novel by Colleen Hoover, directed by and starring Justin Baldoni (Jane, the Virgin). But until then, Lily (Blake Lively) is busy planning her new life in Boston, including opening the flower shop of her dreams and falling in love with Ryle Kincaid (Baldoni), a handsome neurosurgeon she meets shortly after the funeral.

Lily also makes a new friend, a lively woman who happens upon the flower shop before it opens. In the logic of contrived storytelling, Allysa (Jenny Slate) is, of course, related to Ryle. Double dates – with Lily, Ryle, Allysa and her husband Marshall (Hasan Minhaj) – become regular occurrences.

Because Lily’s life, as portrayed in DP Barry Peterson’s intimate, gold-toned imagery, seems like a dream, the nightmarish details can be easy to overlook. It ends with us is a portrait of domestic violence, embedded in the framework of a love story.

Hoover’s novel, which served for more than two years at the helm of the The New York Times bestseller list, was criticized for its depiction of domestic violence. Some readers felt the focus on Lily’s relationship with her tormentor Ryle was manipulative. Others blamed the PR machinations that falsely touted the novel as a love triangle. A plan to release a companion coloring book (which was eventually scrapped) didn’t help Hoover’s case either.

A strength of the novel and Baldoni’s adaptation, however, is how firmly the filmmaker anchors us in Lily’s perspective, making the most violent parts of the story easier for viewers. The time spent understanding how Lily falls in love with Ryle increases the emotional toll of the florists’ difficult journey and shows how coercively abusive partnerships can be.

Although there are early signs of problems in the relationship – such as Ryle’s short temper and the way he repeatedly crosses Lily’s boundaries – the film succeeds in creating frightening doubts.

It ends with us fights much harder in other places. The script of Papadio Director Christy Hall makes an effort with some early tongue-in-cheek jokes that acknowledge the novel’s cliches, but the adaptation cannot be saved from the artificiality embedded in the original text.

Details are sparse unless the focus is on Lily’s struggle with abuse and the generational patterns she seeks to break. In flashbacks, we learn that young Lily (an excellent Isabela Ferrer) regularly witnessed her father beating her mother.

Few people know about this traumatic time in her life other than her high school love interest Atlas (played by Alex Neustaedter as a teenager and Brandon Sklenar as an adult). The depth of their bond is presented to us in sporadic, poignant glimpses into the past.

Cliches and ambiguity plague all the characters. Even though the film is over two hours long, Lily, Ryle, and later Atlas remain stubbornly thin. Lively’s charm can only carry Lily so far before the character becomes too one-note. Any interest the script has in exploring her flower business evaporates once men start to play a more prominent role in her life. Her friendship with Allysa, while meaningful to Lily, is also not explored sufficiently.

A later conversation between Lily and her mother (Amy Morton) is particularly frustrating because it is a missed opportunity to explore the complex web of reasons why survivors find it difficult to leave abusive relationships.

The superficial treatment of these characters ultimately does not serve to undermine the broader themes that It ends with usWithout learning more about Lily’s environment or developing a better sense of how she navigates her relationship with Ryle, the film can feel too light and thin to do justice to the importance of its themes.