Circle of Friends
First screened in 1995 or 1996 / Most recently screened and reviewed in August 2024
Director: Pat O'Connor. Cast: Minnie Driver, Saffron Burrows, Chris O'Donnell, Alan Cumming Geraldine O'Rawe, Colin Firth, Aidan Gillen, Mick Lally, Britta Smith, Ciarán Hinds, John Kavanagh, Ruth McCabe, Tony Doyle, Marie Mullen. Screenplay: Andrew Davies (based on the novel by Maeve Binchy).VOR:③
I wish more youthful romances were this embracing of character and this able to navigate the comedy/drama line, even as clichés abound.
The one bummer of watching Circle of Friends, as I also felt back in 1995, is the reiteration of how homely and plus-sized and even "rhinoceros-like," all taken for granted as synonyms, is our smart and spunky heroine Benny. Can nobody see Minnie Driver? That bright, open, incandescent face? That radiant smile? Those wonderful curls? I saw the ad in the paper upon release of Driver and Chris O'Donnell crouched at brookside and thought I wanted to meet this fetching couple, but Driver was the senior partner in gorgeousness. It's a plot point that O'Donnell's rugby hero goes out of his way to approach her from a sea of smiling girls, which is meant to be a surprise to her and maybe to us, but I still don't see how anyone would have acted any differently, or why.
If anything, director Pat O'Connor might have cast a little more strongly in the direction of all these putative pejoratives, but you wouldn't want to lose Driver from your movie. Benny's energy is luminous, without the actress or the cinematographer hard-selling us with blandly beatific closeups or haloed light. (No such restraint is shown with the Irish locations, every single shot of which makes sure to remind us of their Emerald Isle reputation.) It's even better that, despite the self-disparagement Benny repeatedly delivers, Driver doesn't compound that with any glum conviction in her line readings. You get the sense her Benny 100% believes that she's no standout, yet she also may know she is lowballing herself excessively as acculturated habit, a way of managing expectations and of avoiding needless injury.
With all that out of the way, Circle of Friends is a sweetly romantic character study at the intersection of school years and small-town life in 1950s Ireland. Emotionally, the movie's about two-thirds sunny weather and one-third cloud banks, with one or two serious storms interspersed. The tonal trajectory isn't all the way "happily ever after" but nor is the core of warmth and goodness abandoned for a journey into pure heartbreak or unwelcome wisdom. University kids act like many university kids in that time and place probably acted, as do families, as do girlfriends, as do unctuous, unworthy suitors who are quite positive they're welcome catches. There's just enough shine for the movie to quietly admit its movieness, but we're still impressively close to the bobs and currents, the humor and worry, the good and bad breaks of real life.
O'Connor isn't in every case the actors' friend in maintaining subtlety or in keeping them all on the same frequency of sprightly-sad memory piece. But it's a credit to him, to the cast, probably to Maeve Binchy's novel, and surely to the adaptation by Andrew Davies (of the beloved BBC Pride and Prejudice, that same year) that neither the romance plot nor the sisterly friendships nor the family circles nor the town portrait nor the broader coming-of-age takes full precedence. You sense this story wants to knit all of that into the same fabric, and that's very much how Circle of Friends feels. Whichever thread we're following at a given moment has the movie's and the viewer's full attention before gently giving way to one of the others, or cable-stitching together with it.
Circle of Friends opened in the U.S. almost simultaneously with the delayed arrival of Muriel's Wedding, and they were affectionately if somewhat narrowly paired in lots of press as widely accessible yet culturally specific wallflower comedies. Collette's movie took weirder risks, which shaped up quickly to be the actress's signature as well. But it's been a private pleasure for 30 years to see Driver and Collette both build such versatile and durable careers, after so many articles that, albeit with good intentions, painted each as an improbable star. As for her vehicle, Circle of Friends has a modest style and carriage, but if a tender, funny, and credible story of love, affinity, betrayal, and kinship were so easy to pull off, you'd see them a lot more often, right? This maybe isn't the movie to zoom to the top of your watchlist, but it's the one that absolutely comes through on the night you find yourself eager for something like it. And if decades somehow slip by between viewings, you'll be thrilled to note that neither Benny nor her movie remotely peaked in college. Grade:B–
