Review | Cannes 2022: Plan 75 movie review – Japan’s ageist social mores reconsidered in harrowing yet humane drama, a feature-length expansion from Ten Years Japan
- Director Chie Hayakawa’s film about how over-75s are given a choice to end their lives for ‘perks’ offers a hard-hitting critique of a cold, pragmatic society
- With its subtle screenplay and matching performances from its brilliant cast, Plan 75 has done Japanese cinema proud at Cannes 2022
4/5 stars
A subgenre of films has long existed about the murder of old people as an act of social control: Michael Anderson’s Logan’s Run (1976), for example, or the two versions of The Ballad of Narayama by Keisuke Kinoshita (1957) and Shohei Imamura (1983). But Plan 75 offers something different.
Eschewing the settings of a dystopic future or a distant past, Japanese director Chie Hayakawa’s first feature unfolds in a very recognisable and relatable here and now, as pensioners are coaxed into signing up for euthanasia as a final and dignified contribution to society.
Dressing up her fantastical scenario without hardly the faintest of sensationalist melodrama, Hayakawa has delivered something at once harrowing in its ambience, humane at its core and hard-hitting in its critique against the ageist mores of a cold, pragmatic society.
With its subtle screenplay and matching performances from its brilliant cast, Plan 75 has done Japanese cinema proud as the only Japan-set film to feature in the official selection at the Cannes Film Festival this year.
