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I SOOO agree about Chocolat! I have had so many arguments with women about this movie, which aggravated the hell out of me. Women are the worst when it comes to things like this. My argument is why was Juliet Binoche's character so disrespectful to the town in which she came to live? But women never see that angle, it's always the woman as the victim.

I saw the first half of "Chocolat" and thought it really set up a straw-man argument against religion. There was a scene in which a nice, lonely old man is in confession and he tells the priest that he prayed to God for his little dog to recover from its illness. The priest lectures him to the tune of "when will you stop mocking God by praying for an animal? Animals don't have souls."

There had already been put-downs of the Lenten tradition of giving up a pleasure, with no idea that it was temporary, to honor Jesus, and that there was a greater reward. It was shown as just some tradition that people did for some dumb reason. The scene with the mean, petty priest capped my building annoyance.

I can handle a movie that questions a religious tradition or belief. Just don't insult my intelligence.

There are a lot of women who feel more than they think. They like to identify with a female character and pretend that they are her - sort of like little girls with their dolls. It's more fun to escape into the fantasy of being a beautiful, mysterious free spirit like Binoche's character than to really think critically about what she was doing.