Girls just want to have fun, and movies just want to make them pay for it, especially if they're of a certain age. And don't think only Hollywood is to blame -- films from other countries are also allowing women to eat their cake and then letting them have it. Although radical in its politics and sexuality, the eye-opening Mexican film Y tu mamá también indulges its feisty heroine's desires only so long. And the British comedy melodrama Crush makes sure that cinema's most rigid taboo -- older woman with younger man -- does not go unpunished. Until it reaches that point of betrayal, however, the film disarms with its wit, unpredictability, and insight into the terra incognita (on screen, anyway) of women's desire.

The culprit is Kate (Andie MacDowell, whose face time has honed to one of cinema's great beauties), a Southern belle in the unlikely post of headmistress of an exclusive English boarding school. Being professionally successful and a single woman, she is, of course, desperately unhappy -- she has no children! she can't get laid! So she joins with fellow fortysomething professional whiners Janine (Imelda Staunton), the divorced local police chief, and Molly (Anna Chancellor), the divorced local physician, in weekly self-flagellating soirées where they drink, eat chocolate and compare pathetic stories. Sounds awful, but if director John McKay isn't George Cukor, neither is he Penny Marshall, and the trio's acid tongues and rueful self-awareness almost earn them respect. Then Kate's former student Jed (Kenny Doughty) seduces her with his organ playing (pun unfortunately intended) at a funeral. He explains how he can manipulate emotions through notes; when McKay tries the same, he winds up pushing all the familiar buttons. At the Showcase (Seekonk Route 6 only).