Circle of Friends (1995)

Taglines: Sometimes dreams do come true.

Circle of Friends is set in 1950’s Ireland. The movie focuses on Benny Hogan and her best friend, Eve Malone. The story centers around Benny and Eve as they enter student life at University College, Dublin. Here Benny and Eve reunite with their childhood friend, the ice-cool Nan Mahon, the ‘college belle’. They also encounter the handsome and charming Jack Foley, whom Benny quickly falls for.

Circle of Friends is a 1995 film directed by Irish filmmaker Pat O’Connor, and based on the novel of the same name written by Maeve Binchy. The movie was well received by critics and was a box office success. It stars Chris O’Donnell, Minnie Driver, Geraldine O’Rawe, Saffron Burrows, Alan Cumming, Colin Firth, Aidan Gillen, John Kavanagh, Britta Smith and Ciarán Hinds.

About the Story

Set in 1950s Ireland, the film focuses on the experiences of Bernadette “Benny” Hogan and her two friends, Eve Malone and Nan Mahon. They are characterised early on in childhood, during their First Communion: Benny is the beloved and well-fed only child, Eve the orphan raised by nuns and Nan is destined to be defined by her beauty. The three girls grow up in the small town of Knockglen. Skip to eight years later: Nan has moved on to Dublin years earlier, and Benny and Eve have graduated from the local convent school and are heading to Dublin to attend university.

Eve’s education is financed by the local wealthy Westward Protestant family. The family has also willed to her a cottage on their property. Eve boards at a convent in Dublin, while Benny must commute daily between home and Dublin, her parents being loath to let her go. They would prefer she marry the loathsome and creepy Sean Walsh, her father’s faithful employee at his tailor shop.

Once in Dublin the two girls reconnect with a mature and sophisticated Nan who is quite aware of her bewitching effect on the opposite sex. Benny eventually falls in love with Jack Foley, a handsome rugby player and doctor’s son, studying medicine and expected to follow in his father’s footsteps, though he is not quite convinced that this is the career for him.

After the College Ball, Benny and Jack begin a relationship, Eve starts to date Aidan, a friend of Jack’s, and Nan becomes involved with the much older Simon Westward, who the group ran into as they entered the dance and whom Nan “accidentally” arranged to run into at a lunch. While Benny is able to resist a physical relationship with Jack, Nan is not and believes that Simon truly loves her.

When Benny’s father dies suddenly, she is forced to suspend her university studies to take care of her mother who is devastated by her husband’s passing, and to run the family shop. Sean Walsh attempts to woo her into marriage. Benny notices the accounts of the prosperous Hogan business are missing significant funds, creating a mystery over double entry bookkeeping. She suspects Sean has something to do with it but has no proof.

Eve’s cottage, in an isolated sector of the Westward estate, serves as a party location for the three young women and their friends. Nan and Simon visit it secretly for their trysts. Sean, who has been spying on the cottage since the first party to watch Benny, witnesses Nan and Simon’s sexual relationship, having hinted at it to Eve during Benny’s father’s funeral. Nan becomes pregnant and reveals the news to Simon, sure he will marry her. Instead, Simon ends their relationship, stating he must marry for money, not love, to maintain the family fortune. He attempts to pay her off with a large cheque to get an abortion in England.

A desperate Nan goes out to find Eve’s boyfriend Aidan, but runs into a depressed and drunk Jack, who has not seen Benny since her father’s funeral. She convinces him to take her as his date to a rugby team party and lures him into having sex with her. She later pretends that he is the one who got her pregnant. Jack does what he believes is the honourable thing and asks Nan to marry him.

He tells Benny about the baby and the engagement and she is devastated. Eve grows suspicious of someone using the cottage after finding a half-burned newspaper in the fireplace. The nuns from her old convent told her they had seen lights on at the cottage and smoke coming from the chimney. Nan suggests that perhaps the cottage is haunted to cover up her and Simon’s secret meetings there.

About the Story

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