Grab your friends, wear your florals, settle down with a tasty cocktail and kick back: this year’s sexiest movie about domestic violence is upon us!
Er … what? If that was your general reaction, you are not alone. For weeks, the weird marketing for It Ends With Us, the film adaptation of Colleen Hoover’s bestselling novel, has been raising eyebrows and causing intense drama on the internet.
If you are avoiding spoilers, please click away, because I am going to give a little background for anyone unfamiliar with Hoover’s work. It Ends With Us is about a florist called Lily Blossom Bloom who is seemingly obsessed with “marine-grade polymer” outdoor furniture. (This comes up a lot in the book; don’t ask why.) Bloom, who is working through the death of her abusive father, falls for a sexy neurosurgeon called Ryle Kincaid. He is abusive and eventually she leaves him, although they end up co-parenting.
The portrayals of domestic abuse in the book and the film have received mixed reviews. Some critics have accused Hoover, whose books are generally marketed as romance novels but often deal with abuse, of fetishising toxic relationships. This criticism was supercharged last year when Hoover announced plans – later shelved – to release a colouring book based on It Ends With Us.
While CoHo, as she is known, has her haters, she has also been praised her for the way she navigates difficult topics and for speaking about how It Ends With Us was influenced by her experience of growing up in an abusive household. The film, which stars Blake Lively and has pulled in almost $200m (£155m) at the box office, has been commended by some experts on intimate-partner violence for tackling the subject with “sensitivity and depth”.
This matters, because Hoover has enormous reach: she is a publishing phenomenon whose work outsold the Bible in 2022. Love her or hate her, there is no denying that Hoover’s work has serious impact. Her books aren’t my cup of tea, but I think it’s great that she has opened up so many conversations about the different forms that abuse can take.
What isn’t great, however, is the breezy at best, wildly inappropriate at worst marketing for the film – which comes on top of rumours of a feud between Lively and Justin Baldoni, the movie’s director and co-lead.
One of the promotional pieces that has received the most criticism is a cutesy TikTok on the official It Ends With Us page in which Lively says: “Grab your friends, wear your florals and head out to see it.” It feels, first, like a desperate attempt to recreate the cultural moment that Barbie had and, second, completely inappropriate for a film about abuse. Lively’s sarcastic answer to a serious question about how fans might talk to her about the movie’s themes (“Like location-share? I could just location-share you …”) hasn’t won her any fans, either.
Then there is the fact that Lively seems to be using It Ends With Us to promote her drinks companies. The post-premiere party featured cocktails made with her products – and the gin owned by her husband, Ryan Reynolds – with themed names such as Ryle You Wait. Yep, that is an alcoholic drink named after the abusive adversary in the film– an interesting choice, considering the links between alcohol and domestic abuse.
Also, to the casual observer, it looks as if Lively piggybacked the release of the film to launch her haircare line. It has been reported that the launch was not intended to coincide with the film – but it has, hasn’t it? Not a good look.
Marketing a movie about domestic abuse will inevitably be challenging; a few missteps are understandable. The problem here is that Lively seems more interested in marketing her brands than anything else.
Cynics might suggest that you don’t sell hair products and drinks by talking about domestic abuse; that would be a real downer. Far better to focus on floral dresses and girls’ nights out! Judging by the backlash, however, this strategy isn’t working. I have a feeling that all this will end with the hasty hiring of a crisis-management firm.
• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist
