As the movie opens, we meet Benny at home in a small town, where her father is the haberdasher. They confidently expect her to someday marry Sean (Alan Cumming), the store manager, an unctuous and shifty type. Benny grows older and goes off to university, taking the bus in to Dublin every day, and soon she has eyes only for Jack.

Meanwhile, a parallel story involves Benny's friend Nan (Saffron Burrows), superficially glamorous, and Simon (Colin Firth), a member of the Protestant land-owning class, whose family intends him to marry for money. Nan knows just what she wants, and it's not "one of these college boys." She wants an older, sophisticated man, and thinks Simon fits her needs. She goes after him with guile and charm, and he succumbs - or seems to, until the plot involves itself in betrayals and renunciations.

One of the pleasant things about this film is that the characters are allowed to be intelligent and to think for themselves.

Too many recent American movies about young people, lovers and otherwise, celebrate their self-congratulatory stupidity. It's as if Hollywood is terrified of putting people on the screen who might be smarter than anyone in the audience. Benny, as played by Minnie Driver, is a role-model: She knows her mind and her heart, and she knows what she requires from a man before she will offer him either one. "I know I may look like a rhinoceros," she tells Jack, after he delays asking her to dance at a party, "but I'm quite thin-skinned, really. Don't mess me about. I'll flatten you." "Circle of Friends" is a real treasure. Pat O'Connor, the director, also made the 1984 film "Cal," which won Helen Mirren the best actress award at Cannes. Here, again, he shows an instinctive feeling for characters who are not flighty, not silly, but, as Jack observes about Benny, really there.

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