Readers of the book on which this pleasant film is somewhat shakily based should be told that screenwriter Andrew Davies has one or two different fates in store for the characters from those originally envisaged by author Maeve Binchy. The results unnecessarily romanticise the original, which took a more jaded and shaded view of life in an Irish village and nearby Dublin University in the 1950s. In this version, the 'circle of friends' described by Binchy is really reduced to the central trio of Irish girls who have been chums since childhood. A polyglot cast of British, American and Irish actors achieves a commendable unity of Irish accents, with Minnie Driver amazingly good in the pivotal role of Benny (a star-making performance), Alan Cumming splendidly slimy as her home-town suitor and Chris O'Donnell convincingly charismatic as the school sports hero for whom she falls. Good acting in the main, then, but trite material with which Colin Firth in particular fails to cope without some embarrassment.


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