Circle of Friends" (1995) follows three young women living in 1950s Ireland as they leave their small town and enter college, navigating the spheres of sex and love and adulthood for the first time. Bernadette "Benny" Hogan (Minnie Driver), the film's protagonist, and her best friends, Nan (Saffron Burrows) and Eve (Geraldine O'Rawe), grew up together in Knockglen, a fictitious town just outside of Dublin. Nan, the self-styled sophisticated friend, has already moved to Dublin when Benny and Eve join her to start school at University College Dublin, the Catholic counterpart to the predominantly Protestant Trinity College. In Dublin, the girls fall in love and push the boundaries of their strict Catholic upbringings.
"Circle of Friends" is based upon the book of the same name by popular Irish novelist, MaeveBinchy. If I'm being honest, I must admit that Binchy novels are not exactly literary fiction. "Circle of Friends" is a fairly melodramatic, middlebrow affair, but - if you'll allow me this seeming oxymoron - it is an especially good middlebrow affair.
Minnie Driver, in her first major role, is a joy to watch. She plays Benny - a bright but na??ve girl who feels self-conscious about her weight - with the perfect amount of confidence and reticence. Benny fears she will never find love, but despite being repeatedly told the contrary by a horrendously creepy suitor, she knows she deserves to. Benny's vivacity makes her popular with men and women, which does help to boost her confidence. Eventually, she meets Jack (Chris O'Donnell), a handsome rugby player, and they quickly fall in love. The character of Benny is a clear stand-in for Binchy, who also struggled with her own insecurities. Like Benny, Binchy did find happiness - both in her journalism and fiction writing, as well as in her 35-year marriage to writer Gordon Snell.
Despite the fact that the movie is remarkably unsubtle about Benny's weight - everyone is always telling her she's fat - I like that Jack falls in love with her right away. His love for her is really never a question. Her honesty, cheerfulness and intellect endear her to Jack immediately. It's how they proceed from then on that provides the film's main conflict.
All three of the film's central young women struggle to reconcile their feelings about sex and love with their Catholic faith. Eve resolutely repels all her boyfriend's sexual advances, while Benny experiences more difficulty in dampening her own sexual impulses. The film explores the double standard of the era that held women, but not men, accountable for maintaining a chaste relationship. Unlike her friends, Nan does not resist temptation, nor does she try to. She begins a secret affair with the eldest son in a wealthy, Protestant family. When she becomes pregnant, he refuses to marry her and offers to pay for an abortion.
On a fairly superficial level, "Circle of Friends" also explores the dichotomy of Protestant and Catholic life in mid-20th century Ireland. When Nan tells her boyfriend she cannot have an abortion because she is Catholic, he yells, "Jesus, you people!" Previously in the film, he had used the phrase, "you people" and Nan had corrected him, explaining that she was not like them - namely, not like less affluent, conservative Catholics. For better or worse, Nan transgresses certain Catholic norms, but cannot fully divorce herself from religious morality.
Nan's desperation, combined with Jack's sexual frustration and poor judgment, set the stage for a confrontation between Jack and Benny. I won't reveal exactly how this plays out, but it requires all three characters to reconsider some of their beliefs about sex and faith.
Next week: a special column about "Father Ted" (1995-1998).
Megan Clark is a senior who is majoring in English and history. She can be reached at Megan.Clark@tufts.edu.
