The sum of The Bridge on the River Kwai plus The Big Doll House plus, possibly, Sister Act (or possibly Mr. Holland's Opus). But seeing that those last two quantities are negatives, we should more properly speak of remainder, not sum. And the remainder would itself be a minus: humanist, feminist, fact-based, inspirational schmaltz about the literal harmonization of the melting-pot inmates in a women's prison camp in Japanese-occupied Sumatra in the Second World War. (True to the women-in-prison form, there's a nude shower scene and a catfight over a bar of soap, but the assortment of bodies on exhibit is such as to banish any impure thoughts. This is Schindler's List-ian nudity.) The harmony arises from the organization of an extracurricular music group -- "It's a vocal orchestra, not a choir" -- in defiance of the captors' ban on any kind of writing or congregating. Indeed the group's debut performance of Dvorak's "New World Symphony" seems to come about with no actual rehearsal: so much more dramatic, so much more magical, that way. How will the Japanese react to this hymn (this hum) of freedom? The most nasty of them, the one who had poured gasoline over one prisoner and set her afire, singles out the world's self-anointed first female conductor, marches her into the jungle, and sits her down, rigid with fear and loathing, on a tree root. To put a bullet in her head? No. Wait. To sing to her! Almost shyly, almost nervously, he glances over at her when finished. "You like?" And ever so slightly, she nods, her eyes agleam over this tenuous establishment of human contact, through the universal language of music, across the barriers of hostility and hate. It's that kind of movie. With Glenn Close, Frances McDormand, Pauline Collins, Julianna Margulies, Wendy Hughes, Elizabeth Spriggs, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Ehle, Joanna Ter Steege; directed by Bruce Beresford. (1997) — Duncan Shepherd