It Ends With Us (15)

Colleen Hoover’s smash hit novel gets a ludicrous yet emotionally effective transfer to the big screen.

Arriving as counter-programming to her husband Ryan Reynolds’ crude Deadpool & Wolverine, Blake Lively’s silly, yet glossy and often rather graceful, romantic drama is also trying to appeal to a powerful and vocal fanbase.

Lively plays florist Lily Bloom (yes, really), a woman whose every step is traced by memories of a childhood spent in an abusive home, and her slow-dread realisation that those familiar patterns might exist in her current partner, Ryle Kincaid (Justin Baldoni). But a random reunion with her childhood sweetheart, Atlas (Brandon Sklenar), reminds her of a past she left behind and serves as a wake-up call to a present that’s far darker than she realises.

It’s a plot of hackneyed soap tropes but there’s a real maturity to how it unfolds, a story of abuse that’s far less obvious than we’ve grown accustomed to. Lively seems determined to reintroduce the kind of melodrama that we haven’t seen an awful lot of in recent years; she’s a warm and instinctive performer and has effective chemistry with her two male leads.