MovieChat Forums > Circle of Friends (1995) Discussion > stupid question/spoiler

stupid question/spoiler

posted 16 years ago by bmoviebimbo
12 replies | jump to latest

what happens to nan after she is busted? they show her leaving, i don't remember if she is at a train station or what. is she going away to have her baby? i was distracted during this part of the movie.

[–] Fleur_de_lis 16 years ago

When Eve realized that she had been at the cottage, and deduced that the baby was Westward's, she comes at Nan in anger while holding a knife she was cutting some food with. Nan backs away in fear and her arm shatters a glass door pane. She loses a lot of blood and miscarries. She leaves for England at the end.

[–] siobanphotogirl 13 years ago

maybe that's what happens in the book?

the movie does not state that she has a miscarriage. Jack was there to use his learned medical skills to prevent her from bleeding out.

I understood that she was going to England to have an abortion. :( Bad sad decision.

[–] privatefaces 15 years ago

uh...it was fairly obvious she left for London to get an abortion as it was (is?) illegal to get one in ireland.

[–] walosi 15 years ago

In the book it is very explicitly says that she had a miscarriage during the night while hospitalized for the blood loss. The nurses decide to not to note it in her chart because she was not yet married and no one need ever know she was pregnant. I haven't seen the movie in years and can't remember how it was handled there.

[–] Cloudburst2000 15 years ago

It doesn't claim in the movie that she suffered a miscarriage so I assume that she didn't. This movie differed from the book in so many ways that I pretend they are not even connected. I always thought that she was leaving to have her baby elsewhere and give it up for adoption. It was common in those days to send young unwed women away to have their baby's. The out of sight, out of mind mentality. And to the poster who said she was going away to have an abortion, not quite! You saw her reaction to Simon when he suggested just that. She believed it was wrong. She was Catholic and her religious views would be that abortion WAS murder and that she would be eternally damned for such a thing. Her going away to have the baby and give it up for adoption is the most likely answer.

[–] TejanaNC 15 years ago

She believed it was wrong. She was Catholic and her religious views would be that abortion WAS murder and that she would be eternally damned for such a thing.

Then this is just another of the myriad of unnecessary changes in the transition from novel to movie. In the book, she even says (speaking of Simon's lack of interest in marrying her and his claim that it isn't because her family is lower-class), "Well, it certainly has nothing to do with religion. It's 1958 and neither of us believes in God." (p458 - I just finished re-reading the book, so it was a cinch to find.) It's not the biggest transgression against the book -- that would have to be the fact that they let Nan do the right thing by Jack and then they had Benny MARRY him instead of realizing she doesn't deserve to suffer a lifetime of watchfulness like Jack's mother -- but it's one of many.

[–] Virginiana 14 years ago

TejanaNC

I agree with everything you said except the last bit -- we never see Benny marrying Jack. We see her taking him by the hand and walking him into Eve's cottage, presumably to sleep with him, but that doesn't mean that they will marry. Binchy must've hated that ending. After all, if Eve was furious that Nan had taken Simon to the cottage for illicit sex, wouldn't she resent Benny for doing the same thing? This is, after all, a girl raised by nuns.

[–] nw_sea1 14 years ago

>>After all, if Eve was furious that Nan had taken Simon to the cottage for illicit sex, wouldn't she resent Benny for doing the same thing? This is, after all, a girl raised by nuns.

I'd never thought of it that way! Of course, Benny wouldn't have gone to the cottage without Eve's permission.

I don't know.... I don't think Eve was so furious at Nan because she used the cottage as a place to have sex.. I think it was more the fact that Nan never asked permission to use it at all, she just walked in there as if she owned the place. First she took Simon there, who Eve hated because he was part of the Westward family who'd thrown her parents out and disowned her. (Somewhat irrationally of course, because Simon was only a boy when that happened, but still, that was how Eve felt about him and she swore he'd never set foot in her cottage.)

Eve had already begun to dislike Nan because of the way she tried to use her (Eve) and then Benny to get an introduction to Simon.

But what made Eve angriest, I think, was the fact that Nan took Benny's boyfriend there for sex. Her best friend Benny's boyfriend, being cheated on in Eve's cottage, without Eve's knowledge! Eve was very loyal to her friends and anything that anyone did against Benny, her best friend, would probably make her that person's enemy for life.

And Eve seemed to be having suspicions about whose baby it really was, and probably already suspecting Nan of her plot.

[–] missedna2020 14 years ago

Nan didn't take Jack to the cottage to have sex... They were at a party (he was probably half drunk and missing Benny)and she stook him advantage of that and took him to the supply room.

What made Eve mad about that was because Nan is supposed to be one of Benny's best friends and she stole Jack from her (granted, Nan was desperate) and Nan didn't seem sorry about it. It was like Eve said: "You don't know what you've done, do you?! You've broken Benny's heart!"

And Eve did know it was Simon's baby. She called Nan out on it.

[–] Cloudburst2000 13 years ago

People keep confusing the book with the movie. They differ very much. In the book, Nan slept with Jack more than once. In the movie, it happened one time when Jack was drunk. She took advantage of him in the movie, but in the book, not so much. I pretend the movie and book are not connected and look at the two as separate stories.

[–] Cloudburst2000 13 years ago

I look at the book and movie as two separate stories. In the movie, Nan does consider the thought of aborting her baby to be murder. She even told Simon that she was Catholic and couldn't kill her unborn child. I am referring to the movie in my posts...not the book. The movie, IMO, is based only very loosely on the book.

[–] siobanphotogirl 12 years ago

Nan was not a true Catholic. There is quite a lot of evidence in the movie and the book. She says that premarital sex being a sin is nonsense that the priests make up to suit themselves. She has sex with Simon so that she'll get pregnant by him and he'll have to marry her so she can get away from her unclassy family. Notice how she acts more dignified than them and that she doesn't think bringing him to meet the family would be a good idea?
She planned it all and when Simon sent her away she needed to get the doctor's son to think he knocked her up.