Japan/France/Philippines • Drama • Year: 2022 – Running time: 112 mins
Languages: Japanese/Tagalog
Audience Response: 18 slips returned
- ‘Excellent’: 4 votes
- ‘Very Good’: 9 votes
- ‘Good’: 4 votes
- ‘Satisfactory’: 1 vote
- ‘Poor’: 0 votes
Read the comments here or visit our “Plan 75” discussion page.
Synopsis:
In a dystopian near-future, the Japanese Government introduces Plan 75; a programme that invites senior citizens to be voluntarily euthanized to help alleviate pressures from an increasingly aged society. An elderly woman whose means of survival are vanishing, a pragmatic Plan 75 salesman, and a Filipino labourer face choices of life and death.
The film makes a good case against the idea of euthanasia and is a lesson in humanism.
“Plan 75” might have been a risible exercise in emotional manipulation if not for the sensitive tone with which Hiyakawa approaches all of her characters.
Peter Debruge (Variety)
Director: Chie Hayakawa
Writers: Jason Gray • Chie Hayakawa
Main cast:
| Chieko Baishô | Michi Kakutani | |||
| Hayato Isomura | Hiromu Okabe | |||
| Stefanie Arianne | Maria | |||
| Taka Takao | Uncle Yukio Okabe | |||
| Yumi Kawai | Yôko Narimiya | |||
| Hisako Ôkata | Ineko |
(for full cast list, additional technical information and reviews, please visit the Plan 75 pages in IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes)
CFC Film Notes:
Set in a near future, ‘Plan 75’ is the Japanese government’s new programme, via which citizens aged 75+ are invited to be voluntarily euthanised to help counter the challenges of a super-aged society, receiving a small payment (of ¥100,00) for their (self-)sacrifice. To the corporatised powers that be, Plan 75 seems the preferable management solution – so much easier than burdening Japan’s financial and health and social care systems, after all.
Celebrated actress Chieko Baishô plays Michi, who works as a hotel housekeeper before being made redundant, fearful that she may not be able to support herself and needs to sign up. We also follow two other characters: Hiromu (Hayato Isomura), a Plan 75 salesman facing a crisis of conscience when his estranged Uncle Yukio (Taka Takao) volunteers for the programme; and Maria (Stefanie Arianne), a young immigrant mother, who takes a low-level job at the company to help pay for her daughter’s lifesaving surgery.
Debut director Chie Hayakawa’s quietly realist treatment of the dystopian premise makes for haunting viewing. The mellow dialogue and casual pacing suggest an absence of conflict, but it is precisely the ordinariness of Plan 75’s visual scheme that pricks the viewer’s conscience: it is disconcertingly easy to imagine the plan being implemented in many countries with ageing populations. The film is less an argument about the merits and ills of euthanasia than a searing interrogation of how capitalism is making it too expensive to grow old with dignity.
Plan 75 expresses the escalating anxieties about one’s silver years in Japan, which has one of the world’s most rapidly ageing populations. But the film’s exploration of life’s sacredness, and its tender portrait of elderly relationships, transcend cultural specificities; it’s a resonant lesson in humanism.