To speak to PA's response, I certainly acknowledge the distinction between my variants and the cell phone thing. Those are not meant so much as critiques of the film so much as a tool for analysis. The film my guidelines would produce would be absurd and undramatic. Even in a modern, progressive setting, a story where a character abandons their religion so as not to be bound by rules they feel are unjust and solves a romantic dilemma by choosing "all of the above" would lack dramatic tension. At best it would work as a 10-15 minute short specifically made to point out how quick things end when all the traditional points of conflict are avoided.
When we speak of Yentl's beliefs being in conflict with her desires...it isn't so much that she feels shame or sinful for wanting to study. She seems to have clarity in her mind that the institution is wrong. There isn't a lot of avenues for her to fight it. Though it isn't set as the purpose, going undercover to study and both argue from this acquired privilege of the injustice of the situation, and to ultimately prove their perception of women as perhaps incapable wrong when she is revealed, would be a fairly strong option.
Sandy, I thank you for sharing your experience and it does match up with Yentl's to a fair degree. The religious institution is totalitarian in the sense it is integrated into every facet of her community. I'm not even sure what escape would mean for Yentl. I guess it is the choice she ultimately makes. Compare that to my own religious upbringing where the church community was a niche, a place and a group of people that occupied a few hours on Sunday but was essentially non-existant in the rest of my life. That makes it extremely easy to walk away, and for more innocuous reasons than we see here or in Gett.
P.S. I feel like the Before Sunrise trilogy would be prime example of non-contrived romance.