Plan 75 Review: A Quietly Tragic Depiction of a World Where Empathy Is Scarce

Hayakawa Chie reveals a culture that seems almost mobilized to destroy its own soul.

Plan 75
Photo: Cannes Film Festival

Hayakawa Chie’s Plan 75 depicts Japan as necro-political dystopia where the elderly are encouraged to euthanize themselves in order to assuage the nation’s economic distress. People 75 and older who apply for the “Plan 75” program, an operation driven by uncannily pragmatic end-of-life protocols, receive 100,000 yen, or approximately $800, for their self-sacrifice, which they’re free to spend on, say, a final domestic trip or expensive meal. Within 10 years, we learn, people 65 and over will become eligible for the opportunity.

With stinging precision, Hayakawa reveals a culture that seems almost mobilized to push corporately assisted suicide on those who are a burden to health care and financial systems. And as one expects from a sterile bureaucratic process, applying for Plan 75 is, in the grand scheme of things, quite a breeze: Lines are open 24/7 and attendants are friendly and efficient. Applying for social aid, on the other hand, is a big hassle, so why bother with that?

This tale of human solitude and social cruelty primarily focuses on Hiromi (Isomura Hayato), a recruitment agent for Plan 75; Maria (Stefanie Arianne Akashi), a Filipino woman driven to work for Plan 75 when her daughter’s health takes a turn for the worse; and Michi (Baishô Chieko), an aging and lonely hotel maid seduced by Plan 75 after losing her job. While the plot lends itself to a critique of neoliberal measures and how a nation peddles fantasies of martyrdom and views the elderly as disposable, it’s when Hayakawa homes in on her characters’ personal dilemmas that the film goes beyond its allegorical function.

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At the start, the film seems destined to succumb to gimmickry, as the rituals of Plan 75 define the background, middle ground, and foreground of every sequence, instead of a general atmosphere within which characters live out their dramas. But it shifts gears once Plan 75’s recruiters’ robotic veneer begins to show signs of life. In one scene, Hiromi realizes that one of his new clients is his own uncle, Yukio (Takao Taka), which causes old wounds to reopen, though the old man only makes the most perfunctory attempts at addressing them.

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Because so much of Hayakawa’s film is given over to depictions of the procedures, formalities, and impersonal administration that define Plan 75, even the tiniest spark of feeling comes as a relief. In that sense, Michi’s subplot is especially captivating, and for the way that Hayakawa avoids sentimentality, treating the timid possibilities of a connection between human beings that’s beyond the register of a transaction with the utmost care.

Michi, like other Plan 75 clients, seems to be in dire need of therapy or friendship, not euthanasia. The woman is full of stories and driven by a hunger for life, and in her customer service agent, Yoko (Kawai Yuumi), she finds a pair of willing ears. When Michi proposes to meet Yoko, she’s told that clients and employees aren’t allowed to, so as to prevent them from becoming emotionally attached or, worse, from changing their minds about being euthanized.

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Michi and Yoko meet anyway, and they enjoy a nice conversation over cream sodas. The hyper-controlled and timed encounters between the elderly Michi and the normally impassive representative of the state and of death itself—which are one in the same in the context of this film—movingly give way to free-flowing bliss and the women go bowling together. Will Michi break her Plan 75 contract? Will Yoko stage some 11th-hour operation to save Michi?

Whatever happens, the film suggests, it’s always already too late for any of it to matter. All of the things that have remained unsaid between generations have been cemented. A nation has reduced its citizens to one of two possible roles: disposable encumbrance or death merchant. And yet there’s something about the chance that, in a moment of euphoria or cultural recklessness, someone might break the code of silence and an honest word will come out: a confession, a declaration of love, or a demand for it. And while such moments may never materialize, the ecstasy of life inhabits precisely in the possibility that they would.

Score: 
 Cast: Baishô Chieko, Isomura Hayato, Takao Taka, Kawai Yuumi, Stefanie Arianne Akashi  Director: Hayakawa Chie  Screenwriter: Hayakawa Chie  Running Time: 105 min  Rating: NR  Year: 2022

Diego Semerene

Diego Semerene is an assistant professor of queer and transgender media at the University of Amsterdam.

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