Description
In a near dystopian future, Japan’s government launches PLAN 75, a program encouraging the elderly to terminate their own lives to relieve its rapidly aging population’s social and economic burdens. In Chie Hayakawa’s remarkable and sensitive feature film debut, the lives of three ordinary citizens intersect in this new reality as they confront the crushing callousness of a world ready to dispose of those no longer deemed valuable.
Legendary Japanese actress Chieko Baishō stars as a 78-year-old Michi who considers signing up for the program after losing her meager but fulfilling hotel job and the means to live independently. A young Plan 75 salesman Himoru (Hayato Isomura) initially believes in the program’s benefits and serves as the human face of the program. And Maria (Stephanie Arianne), a Filipino care worker living overseas, reluctantly accepts a position with PLAN 75 to send money home to her ailing daughter. On the surface, the plan and its hawkers exude a kindness that serves as the film’s chilling vision of bureaucratic indifference and our increasing loss of interconnectedness. However, Hayakawa’s view is far from grim, as these characters soon learn to fully reckon with their own lives and what it truly means to live.
Reviews
“It’s one of the best films of the year. Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 is a devastatingly unsentimental triumph!”
—Seventh Row
“With stinging precision, Hayakawa Chie reveals a culture that seems almost mobilized to destroy its own soul.”
—Slant Magazine
“Hayakawa wants to remind us of our humanity, our need for collectivity and community, and to stop us from allowing our political leaders to reduce us to a number on a spreadsheet.”
—Vulture
“The filmmaker elegantly demonstrates her many gifts.”
—Cineurope
“This is an ultra-delicate whisper of a drama… And yet the anger that fringes such bittersweet moments gradually accumulates into a palpable and lingering rage at how good we’ve become at branding cruelty as compassion.”
—Indiewire
“[A] quietly bold debut feature.”
—New York Times
“These character arcs play out in subtle, naturalistic ways, with restrained performances that underline the tension between the film’s polite surface and unsettling subtext. ”
—Roger Ebert
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