Fifty years after being liberated from a Japanese prison camp where they were held during World War II, Australian Bridie and prurient Englishwoman Sheila are reuniting in person for the first time in half a century to take part in a documentary about their experiences. Bridie was a military nurse who travelled to an area north of Singapore. Her father was proud of her joining the army and gave her a shoe horn to make her boots last longer. Bridie tells Rick, the show's interviewer, that although there were rumors about a Japanese invasion, nobody knew anything for sure and so nobody believed the stories. Australian and British forces moved into Singapore where Bridie helps in a chaotic field hospital treating wounded Allied soldiers. She boards a ship with three hundred women and children to get out of the area all together, but her ship is hit by a torpedo and it sinks, leaving passengers floundering in the water, where they are picked up by Japanese troops.
After her interview she meets Sheila at the hotel where they are staying. Sheila is reserved in the extreme and believes sharing their stories so openly is undignified. Bridie lets Sheila know that she is upset that she never came to visit her and although Sheila said she would return to England after liberation she did not; she settled in Australia but never reached out to Bridie or tried to get in touch.
The following day the women sit down for a joint interview with Rick. There is palpable tension between them. Rick asks why Sheila and her family didn't leave Singapore before the Japanese invasion and she claims that it was out of a greater sense of patriotism to the Empire. When Sheila was put on a ship to Australia, it was bombed, just like Bridie's. The two women met whilst clinging to a portion of the ship in freezing cold waters.
Back at the hotel, Sheila takes issue with Bridie's disparaging comments about British forces, which Bridie laughs off, since Sheila has not set foot on British soil in fifty years.
Rick asks more probing questions the following day. Were the Japanese guards ever sexually aggressive? Bridie tells him that thy were, stting up a glorified brothel. She was taken there one night with several other nurses, but one had the clever idea of taking with her a handkerchief stained with blood, and coughing into it to make it appear that she had coughed up the blood herself. This frightened the Japanese who did not want to catch tuberculosis and the entire group of nurses began to cough. They were sent away. Sheila tells Rick that it was an Australian prisoner who suggested the guards set up a brothel, to which Bridie retorts that the British women held prisoner were selling themselves to the Japanese in return for favorable treatment which made it much harder for the other women in the camp to refuse. Rick disspates their anger with each other by asking how they maintained hope; they mention a choir that was set up by a fellow prisoner, in which they both participated. Sheila sang and Bridie tapped out the rhythm for the music with her shoe horn.
Bridie tells Rick in her next interview that one Christmas a group of Australian men broke away from their work detail and came to the chain fence. They began to sing and one waved at Bridie directly. It made her bizarrely happy. Rick asked if she ever saw the man again and she said that she did; in fact, she married him.
Back at the hotel room Sheila is drunk. This bothers Bridie but what really bothers her more is that drunk people speak a truth that sober people never do, and she knows that Sheila means all the cruel things she is saying. She asks Sheila why she never tried to get in touch with her after the war, and Sheila replies that all they had in common was the camp. She did not want to be reminded of it. She opens a drawer to show Bridie the shoe horn she has kept which stuns Bridie who had believed Sheila had traded it for a bottle of anti-malarial medication when Bridie was sick. Sheila admits that she had sex with a prison guard to get the medication, and when she heard Bridie say she would never have gone with a Japanese guard for anyone in the world, she knows that Bridie would not have done the same thing for her.
Bridie tells Sheila that she once was arrested for shoplifting when she heard a group of Japanese tourists in a store. Hearing their accents and their language terrified her and she ran without thinking. Rather than admit this she took the fine and the punishment in court. Sheila tells her this is nothing to be ashamed of. She, though, is ashamed that she was raped. The women realize that they are still prisoners of their past and although they were physically liberated they remain mentally imprisoned. In their last interview they each tell the other's secret so that they can finally be free. In the camp they had vowed to go dancing when they finally got out of the camp but they had never actually done so. After their interview is completed they go back to their hotel room and dance, finally able to celebrate their freedom.
