Plan 75 (Chie Hayakawa, 2022)

Chieko Baisho in Plan 75

Cast: Chieko Baisho, Hayato Isamuro, Stefanie Arianne, Taka Takao, Yumi Kawai, Hideko Okata, Kazuyoshi Kushida. Screenplay: Chie Hayakawa, Jason Gray. Cinematography: Hideho Urata. Production design: Setsuko Shiokawa. Film editing: Anne Klotz. Music: Rémi Boubai. 

Plan 75, Chie Hayakawa's debut feature, is a fable about a future in which the problem of an aging population in Japan produces legislation that encourages people over 75 to take the option of government-funded euthanasia. It's a very near future: The clothes, architecture, cars and trucks, and even the advertising design all look contemporary. Hayakawa takes a somber, thoughtful, low-key approach to material that could very easily be turned into a horror movie or a biting satire. In fact, the film is perhaps a little too somber and low-key, for the strongest note in the film is pathos, which tends to blunt its edge. The central character is Michi Kakutani (Chieko Baisho), who has reached the age of eligibility for Plan 75, as it's called, with no job, no family, and the threat of having no place to live. She gets much encouragement to sign up from the media, from advertising, and even from those in her age cohort, so she takes the step. At the same time, some of the young people who have been hired to administer the program begin to ask questions about it. Hiromu Okabe, who works in recruiting people for the plan, discovers that his uncle Yukio (Taka Takao) has signed up for it. When Hiromu looks into how the plan is funded, he discovers evidence of corruption. Maria (Stefanie Arianne), a Filipina who works in Japan so she can send money back home to pay for her daughter's operation, takes a job with the plan that involves removing the clothes of the deceased and sorting through their belongs. There are echoes of the Holocaust in what she does, and she finds corruption, too. And Yoko (Yumi Kawai), who works as a counselor for those who sign up, spending 15 minutes a week on the phone with them, begins to have doubts about her job when she violates protocol and meets Michi in person, finding a woman still full of life and spirit. Still, the program is such a success that by the end of the film the government is thinking of lowering the eligibility age to 65. Almost all of the conflict in the film is internal: The only sign of opposition to the program comes when something is flung at a poster Hiromu is putting up. Hayakawa deserves praise for not yielding to conventional movie sensationalism, but as haunting as the film is, it would have benefited from a slightly sharper edge.