There is a nasty surprise for the colonisers on Singapore: they are the victims of propaganda from their own government, who failed to tell them that the colony would in a few days be invaded by the Japanese war machine. Women and children are squeezed onto a ship which just manages to sail in time – but not into safety. Japanese bombers attack the ship and swiftly sink it. Most survive and make it to shore. But Sumatra is already in enemy hands, so 300 women, mostly from North America, Australia and Europe, are taken off to a prison camp in the jungle. There is about as much regard for the Geneva Convention as there is humanity in the head of the secret service.

At first there are troubled times for the women of different nationalities, languages, classes and cliques, but in time they learn to give each other strength to survive the awful and brutal living conditions. One way is the formation of a choir, a direct contravention of camp regulations. But time is something the women have too much of, for many will not survive the torture.
 

• An important and brand new theme, which could have finally been dealt with here, had co-author and director Bruce Beresford thought of a better way than churning out traditional Hollywood fayre à la Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence in a new form. This safety first policy failed at the first, because we are now in the 90s, not the 50s, not even the 80s, the decades Beresford borrowed the structure of the film from. Just the scene where the women start humming for the first time, the guards, disobeying orders, hesitate and the camera focusses on bright children's eyes, graves and the sick and ailing, before taking in the clear starry skies over exotic scenery, must have gone right off the schmalz and kitsch scale of even today's North American audience, rather than resulting the hoped-for emotion. The way it was made, this whole film (in contrast to actual events) is extremely overdone and makes it impossible to take the story as seriously as it ought to be. Even Glenn Close in the lead role as Adrienne Pargiter overacts, as if trying to take the Oscar – after five nominations – by force, if need be. By the time they start discussing Japanese men's genitals (some actually have big ones, fancy that!), the audience will be wondering what these film is meant to convey. In the states Paradise Road sank, needing two whole months to make its first two million dollars. It is difficult to imagine how far it will sink in Europe.

Prisoners forced into prostitution and attempted rape with the threat of execution because the victim dared to defend herself, are just some of the uncomfortable themes that deserved to be aired. But, please, not as a melodramatic picture postcard with a strong whiff of pomposity, these attacks on human dignity can do without that sort of treatment.

Oh, and the German Jewish wife of a doctor, played by Frances McDormand, almost unwittingly caricatures the clichéed German governess – or is it the German lumberjack lesbian? Or both?

Filmdata:

Official link: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/paradise/index.html