CIRCLE OF FRIENDS

 

THREE STARS – Searching, Engaging

 

 

        How one finds love in a world in which it is neither modeled nor taught  is the quest of three young women  in Pat O’Conner’s “Circle of Friends.”

        Set within Ireland in 1957, the autobiographical story weaves together the lives of Bernadette Hogan, called Benny,  (Minnie Driver), and her two childhood friends, Eve (Geraldine O’Rawe) and Nan (Saffron Burrows).

        As the story unfolds we become aware of the fact that all three women are reared in homes in which  relationships are distant, absent, or abusive.  This vacuous experience creates within each girl a desperate and confused longing for love.

        But how are they to find it?  Where is love modeled or taught?  If it is not experienced in the home, then where does a person turn for help?

        At first it seemed that the story was going to suggest it could be found in the church.   Early in the film, the three young women are confirmed together into the Catholic church.

        But the church, personified by a harsh, caricatured priest, seems more concerned with avoiding sexual expressions of love than in teaching or demonstrating love’s fulfillment.

        In an erudite manner, the priest pronounces to the young women that they have only one choice:  to keep their bodies as a “garden for Jesus” or to give up their bodies as a “vessel for sin.”

        This all-or-nothing, nun-or-prostitute teaching is inadequate and unbiblical. 

        Sexuality is a wonderful gift of God intended to give His people great pleasure.  When experienced within the commitments and faithfulness of marriage it secures increasing joy in a person’s life.   

        But the entire message of biblical love is much larger than sexual expressions.

        Benny and her circle of friends never heard or learned this biblical truth, and therefore, they experience a false struggle between their sexual feelings and their desire to live a life of love.

        Disappointed by the message of the church, the girls enroll together in the instruction of the university.

        Although the movie does not make the professor a comic figure, he is just as caricatured as the priest.

        In a pompous style, he suggests that love is found in the removal of moral restraint by explaing that in a particular island culture, the young people have free sexual access to one another with no consequences.

        Just as in the instruction of the church, the professor’s words are inadequate and unsubstantiated. 

        Love, as the women discover, has more to do with faithfulness, honesty, integrity and forgiveness than it does free sexual expression.

        Failed by family, church and school, the three friends are  left on their own to find the love for which they long.

        This experience is painful.  Nan, in her manipulative attempt to use her beauty and her virginity to snare a wealthy husband, only experiences the pain of being used herself.

        Benny is devastated when the love of her life, Jack (Chris O’Donnell), is unfaithful with Nan.

        Nan’s betrayal of both Benny and Jack causes her to have to leave not only her circle of friends, but her home and  community as well.  Love becomes even more illusive in her life.

        “Circle of Friends”  reflects the experience of people who are not given the modeling or the instruction of truly loving homes, churches and schools.

        Like the professor, they often see religious moral instruction as producing “shame, guilt and fear.” It is their belief that if there were no moral instruction, then people would be free from guilt and fear.

        The truth is that immorality, which uses others, is what produces guilt, shame and fear.  Morality, which honors others, produces love, joy and peace.   When we understand that truth, our lives will truly become blessed.

       

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