Review of Circle of Friends (1995) by Edith N — 30 Oct 2007

The thing that strikes me most about this movie is the ending and how it differs from the ending of the book, so this review will have spoilers. Though, I suppose, the ending of the movie is rather closer to what people will expect. Still, there are details leading up to the last five minutes that aren't quite as expected.

[i]Circle of Friends[/i] is based on the novel of the same name by Maeve Binchy. It's set in Ireland in the 1950s and is the story of Bernadette "Bennie" Hogan, Eve Malone, and their various friends. These friends include Nan Mahon and Bennie's boyfriend, Jack Foley. Nan spends about half the story maneuvering to be married to Eve's cousin, Simon Westward, gets pregnant, and seduces Jack so as to convince him that the baby's his when Simon won't marry her.

In the movie, Nan takes off for England and Jack and Bennie get back together. I find this a whole unsatisfying conclusion, because Bennie deserves better. In the book, Nan loses the baby and [i]then[/i] goes to England; her friends never really forgive her, and while Jack becomes sort of part of the group again, Bennie's being hit on by someone else in the last scene and feels able to ignore Jack entirely. She comes through the traumas of the story stronger, in fact, and wouldn't go back to Jack after his betrayal.

Now, I do find it a greater betrayal on the part of Nan, because she did seduce Jack, but he let himself be seduced. Probably she chose him because she knew it would work, in fact. Jack is never portrayed as being particularly strong-willed. Nan is. The only problem Nan ever has comes when Simon tells her that he must marry for money, not love.

I happen to like the book a great deal. That's part of my problem with the movie, naturally. It's true that Alan Cumming makes a perfect Sean Walsh--he embodies the word "unctuous." Minnie Driver makes a passable Bennie, and Geraldine O'Rawe, who is lovely, does an excellent Eve. But I don't think we need to have Bennie find Sean's pornography and nearly get raped by him, for example. And we don't need Nan to be an old school friend of Bennie and Eve's who moved away. I understand why they left a lot of things out; you have to, in a movie, when the book you're basing it on is some 600 pages. What I object to more is what's changed. Especially that damned ending.