Plan 75
Chie Hayakawa's Plan 75 imagines an alternate vision of Japan where the elderly are encouraged to be euthanised for the good of the nation; it's a a piece of thought-provoking speculative fiction worthy of comparisons to Children of Men
The opening of Chie Hayakawa's debut feature – based on her 2018 short – evokes a real-life 2016 tragedy: the murder of 19 care home inhabitants and the injury of 26 more in Sagamihara, Japan, by a man who believed the residents a drain on society. In her alternate vision of present-day Japan, this scarcity mindset has been magnified to the extreme as the government launches Plan 75, a scheme encouraging the country’s elderly to end their lives to relieve the burden on the young. An easy life until this euthanasia and a hefty financial bonus to make your younger relatives’ lives easier sweeten the callous deal.
Asking your elderly to kill themselves feels extreme, and Plan 75 cannot wholly avoid emotional manipulation as it follows several interlocking stories. However, Hayakawa's script is sensitively judged, and its horrors are kept desaturated, unsensationalised, and largely out of frame in favour of the remarkably warm performances she elicits from her actors. These moments of light and levity are a poignant and effective foil to the chilling bureaucracy driving the plot.
Perhaps the insidiousness of the extremity portrayed is a wake-up call. In an almost throwaway scene, young men cheerfully test out dividing armrests to see which would best prevent the city’s homeless population from sleeping on park benches. The moment is startling but recognisable in hostile architecture worldwide. The best speculative fiction is fact taken to its extreme conclusion. In its pointed observation, Plan 75 echoes Cuarón’s Children of Men. One hopes it proves more warning than prophecy.
Released 12 May via Curzon; certificate 15