BERLIN, Germany - All that Lily Bloom wants is a fresh start. But as soon as she opens up to a new man in her life, the past begins to catch up with her in "It ends with us," the movie adaptation of Colleen Hoover's bestselling romance novel starring Gossip Girl's Blake Lively.
Lively plays Lily who moves to Bosten after her Dad dies, where she opens a flower shop, full of hope that it will help her to leave behind a traumatic childhood.
Shortly after opening, she meets and falls with love with charming neurosurgeon Ryle (played by director Justin Baldoni).
Ryle is caring and passionate at first but soon Lily feels reminded of her father's abusive behaviour towards her mother.
Everything begins to spiral out of her control when her high school sweetheart Atlas Corrigan resurfaces and she finds herself caught between Ryle's jealous rage and the appeal of her former boyfriend.
"It ends with us" delves into the patterns of domestic abuse and the traumatic impact it had on Lily in her youth - and how those experiences continue to haunt her to the present day.
As the film proceeds it becomes clear that what Lily most needs isn't a knight in shining armour (turns out they don't really live up to expectation anyway), but to learn to truly value herself.
Despite its admirable intentions to highlight the pervasive horrors of domestic abuse, "It ends with us" stays a little too much on the superficial side, despite the emotional intensity of the key moments.
Shooting the domestic violence scenes wasn't easy, Baldoni told The Hollywood Reporter.
"There were a lot of times where I would have to go privately into a room and just cry or shake it out and try to get [the character] out of me and that energy out of me, because it's too real," he said.
"There are too many people that are the real-life Lily Blooms of the world that have to deal with that every single day, and I wanted it to be as real as possible and yet it was very hard to shoot those scenes."
Lively, who co-produced the film, told The Hollywood Reporter the team "went through a whole rollercoaster of the human experience" while shooting.
"It ends for us" has a surprise in store for Swifties, with "My Tears Ricochet" chosen for a particularly emotional scene.
According to Lively, a close friend of Taylor Swift, "all of her songs are great, we could have put any song up there." - DPA