It was never going to be easy to promote a film about domestic abuse with flowers, glamour and alcohol. The launch party even featured a cocktail named after the abuser, “Ryle You Wait.”

I’m surprised they didn’t call it “All Ryled Up” or “Ryle With an Iron Fist.”

In case you missed all the fuss, there’s a new Hollywood-starring movie out, based on a best-selling novel by prolific publisher Colleen Hoover, called It Ends with Us.

At the center of the story is a charming woman named Lily Blossom Bloom, whose boyfriend—then husband—becomes increasingly jealous and controlling, and then violent, forcing her to choose whether to stay with him or leave him. Bloom’s own father abused and hurt her mother, hence the desire to break the cycle: “It ends with us.”

Producer Blake Lively stars as Bloom, a flower shop owner who laughs at just about everything, including childbirth. Her co-star and director is Justin Baldoni, who brings a brooding intensity to his role as an angry, tormented, violent neurosurgeon.

I have been writing about domestic violence for years, and when a discussion started on social media about a supposed feud between Lively and Baldoni and the alleged different approaches to the film’s approach and promotion, my interest was piqued.

The marketing choices seemed odd and toneless. I read about Lively telling people to “grab their friends and wear their flower dresses” to screenings, while there were numerous images of her in a series of flower-adorned dresses. It seemed very much like a romantic comedy, cute and sassy. It seemed like an attempt was made to hide or minimize the violence that Bloom endures.

Why is it so hard to tell what this movie is about? It’s dark — or mottled, more accurately, because there are so many bright spots in the movie — but aren’t a lot of movies?

The despair is covered up

I went to Lively’s Instagram page and saw more of the same, with barely any mention of abuse. I noticed that people kept talking about the movie and the various dramas, without actually seeing it. So I decided to go to my local cinema and watch it.

It’s strangely sunny, actually, and seems uncertain about how to balance the super-hot stars with the darkness of the story it tells. The desperation is glossed over. Everyone always looks flawless, they all seem rich, and flowers are constantly fighting for space.

There are a number of things this film does really well: it illustrates some of the biggest red flags, like outbursts of uncontrolled rage, jealousy, and control, it shows how you can still love someone who hurts you, how abusers often masquerade as protectors, and how important it can be to walk away from people who won’t change. It also shows that people who are exposed to domestic violence as children are more likely to enter into abusive relationships as adults.

Any attempt to start conversations about abuse deserves praise.

But if we take this as a serious reflection of what domestic violence really is, it falls short. And especially how relatively easy and safe it was for Bloom to leave.

As I discussed this week with Jeremy Fernandez, co-host of my Not Stupid podcast, it’s a well-established fact that women will try to leave an abusive relationship multiple times before they actually succeed. This is partly because leaving a relationship is the most dangerous time for women.

Lily Bloom simply moves to another apartment and establishes herself as another handsome but nice guy waiting in the wings. When she asks her husband for a divorce and explains why, he basically agrees with her reasoning and walks away. No anger, threats, custody issues, stalking, financial fears, nothing.

And what about the voices of survivors?

I’m not interested in adding to the sometimes unfair pile on Lively , though the marketing decisions have definitely veered in the direction of soft-sell. But I am interested in how this much-discussed film might shape our understanding of the pernicious and widely varying forms of domestic violence.

The biggest missed opportunity is that the producers missed an opportunity to put survivors at the forefront of framing the issue, to include them in promotion, to make sure that there are conversations about the difficulties of leaving, for example. It took far too long to see messages that point to resources, highlight potential safe spaces.

It’s impossible to overstate the importance of lived experience here. Abuse was part of Hoover’s own story — It Ends With Us was inspired by the story of her parents’ marriage — shouldn’t she be talking about it?

Last year, Hoover said in an interview with Today that one of her earliest memories was her father throwing a television at her mother. In her book, she wanted to tell a story of endurance, like that of her mother who left her marriage when Hoover was only 2, despite the fact that “there were no resources for women to escape situations like this.”

After the divorce, Hoover said, “I remember growing up with a mother who was so strong and independent.”

Although Hoover was also criticized last year for romanticizing abuse when she and her publisher announced they had developed an “It Ends With Us Coloring Book,” it was withdrawn within 24 hours.

She has also been criticized by survivors of domestic violence and advocates for glorifying troubled, charismatic, yet violent men. Some see her books as a form of trauma porn, but she has spoken of readers who say her books gave them the courage to leave.

For an entire industry that has long profited from violence against women, romanticizing it and tolerating it, it’s a concern. After all, this isn’t Hollywood’s first foray into domestic violence: think heartbreaking, award-winning Once Were Warriors , Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got to Do With It , and Big Little Lies .

The North American group DomesticShelters.Org compiled a list of the best films that accurately portray domestic violence, including I Tonya, Sleeping with the Enemy, Fried Green Tomatoes and A Star is Born. It’s important for survivors to see their own experiences depicted on screen, they write, because:

Because common tactics of abusers include isolation and gaslighting, survivors can feel like they are the only ones this is happening to and that they are crazy to think anything is wrong. Movies that depict domestic violence can reinforce that our gut feelings are right, that abusers are wrong, and that we are not the only ones being targeted.

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Bringing light into dark corners

No film can capture all forms of abuse, or all responses to it. The shame here is that while the celebrities spar, observers and commentators seem too distracted by the flowers and bright lights to focus on a sobering statistic: In the U.S., where this film was made, four in 10 women have experienced sexual or physical violence or stalking, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. More than 61 million women have experienced psychological aggression from a partner.

There are powerful, effective ways to bring light into dark corners of dark homes. Trent Dalton, who grew up watching his mother defend herself from abuse and assault, has written a book, Lola in the Mirror, in which he describes the domestic terror of living with a monster, something he calls “the Tyrannosaurus waltz.” In his work, there is survival without sentimentality, beauty without forced glamour, hope wrung from horror.

A few weekends ago I interviewed him on stage at the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival and saw women in the audience nodding and crying as he told me about his mother’s experience.

This week, the series based on his first book, Boy Swallows Universe, won big at the Logies. It is based on the story of his own life and his mother’s struggles to overcome addiction and violence. The trailer for the series is raw, real and honest.

The room seemed to fall silent as Dalton, holding an award, said, “I want to give a shout-out to all the mothers out there who are like Frankie Bell (the mother in the book) — they’re out in the suburbs tonight and they’re feeling a little lost in the darkness. I just want to say that … please believe me when I say that when your children look at you in the darkness, all they see is your light.”

Stories like this don’t have to avoid hope, sunshine, or optimism; they just have to be grounded in the real world. When promoters try to cram darkness into a closet to make it more palatable, and cover it with flowers to make it prettier, they only contribute, perhaps unintentionally, to the idea that it is something to be ashamed of—something dirty and private, not something to wither under the glare of public exposure.

Julia Baird co-hosts the Not Stupid podcast with Jeremy Fernandez.