- Three women, who've been friends since childhood, meet at university in Dublin in 1957. Student and boyfriend life begins.
- '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.—Anonymous
- Set in 1950s Ireland, the film focuses on the experiences of Bernadette "Benny" Hogan (Minnie Driver) and her two friends, Eve Malone and Nan Mahon (Saffron Burrows). They are characterized 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 poor but destined to be defined by her beauty. The three girls grow up in the small town of Knockglen. Skip to six years later: Nan has moved on to university a year earlier, and Benny and Eve are set to follow.
Eve's education is financed by the local wealthy Westward Protestant family, her father's employers until his death. The family has also willed to her a cottage on their property. Eve boards at a convent, 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. The girls visit their hometown, and Nan becomes involved with the much older Simon Westward, a rich Irish Aristocrat. While Benny is able to resist a physical relationship, Nan is not and believes that Simon truly loves her. In the meantime, when Benny's father dies suddenly, she leaves university to help her mother run the business, and Sean Walsh attempts to woo her into marriage. The accounts of the prosperous Hogan business are missing significant funds, creating a mystery over double-entry bookkeeping or some other cause.
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 sex. Nan becomes pregnant and Simon leaves her, offering to pay her off with a large check to get an abortion in England. A desperate Nan runs into a drunk Jack at a rugby team party, and she lures him into having sex with her to force his hand into marrying her. Nan confronts Jack, who does what he believes is the honorable thing and asks Nan to marry him. He tells Benny about the baby and the engagement, and she is devastated. Eve is suspicious, finds a clue in the cottage fireplace, figures out the truth, confronts Nan at a party and her duplicity comes to light.
That night, when Eve confronts Nan, Nan cuts her arm after falling into a glass cabinet at Eve's cottage. As he attends to her wounds, Jack realizes that he has found his calling in medicine. Nan recognizes that she cannot raise her child in a marriage based on lies and calls off her engagement with Jack.
Jack escorts Nan to the train station and she asks that he and Benny forgive her for her desperate actions. Nan heads to England to have her baby (or to have an abortion), and on to a new beginning. Curiosity gets the best of Benny, and she snoops around Sean's living area above the tailor shop. Sean finds Benny in his room and attempts to sexually assault her. She fights him off, and in the process finds the money that he has embezzled from her family for the duration of his employment. She demands that he leave, and he does, declaring that she is destined to be a spinster for the rest of her life.
Jack finally goes to visit Benny to try to win her back. She is unwilling to let him off so easily and tells him it will take quite a bit of time for him to gain her trust again. He demonstrates his patience and humility, devoting himself to his studies as well. Benny finally relents, accepting his love and proposal of marriage.
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