Review of Circle of Friends

This was the first film of Minnie Driver I ever saw and I loved her in this role as the main character Benny (or Ben as her friends call her) whose coming of age story is told within the full circle of the film as is that of her friends. If you see Driver in this, she is a far cry from the glamour puss she has become today in Hollywood films, but her acting is still just as superb. I truly enjoyed it and recommend it to anyone with a taste or stamina for bawdy Irish jokes, rawness one only sees from the other-side of the pond from time to time and heartbreak that exists in the lives of everyone especially those just getting to know the world for what it truly is. Chris O' Donnell also appears in the film, as the charming young lad Benny falls in love with. Alan Cumming (in another stereotypically sinister role), Colin Firth and Saffron Burrows also co-star.