Tenko with music. It's 1942 and, forced to swim to Sumatra after their ship is bombed by Jap fighters, British, Australian and Dutch women find themselves interned for the duration. Clearly there's a much longer story in this, but director Bruce Beresford concentrates on the impassioned performance of Glenn Close as the inspiration behind the idea of forming an 'orchestral choir', for which inmates imitate instruments of the orchestra to perform pieces of classical music. Crammed with emotive moments, the film has a string of committed performances from Pauline Collins, Cate Blanchett, one-time ER star Julianna Margulies, Jennifer Ehle and especially Elizabeth Spriggs as the upper-class veteran of the camp. No weaknesses in the cast, and few in the film, which presents the women's Japanese captors as human and inhuman at the same time.

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