Cannes Hidden Gem: Speculative Sci-Fi Gets the Social Realist Treatment in ‘Plan 75’

Shocked by a dwindling sense of empathy in her native Japan, director Chie Hayakawa imagines a trenchant scenario in which the government coaxes the elderly into voluntary euthanasia to address the country’s aging population.

BY PATRICK BRZESKI

When Japanese filmmaker Chie Hayakawa returned to Tokyo in 2008 after 10 years of living in New York, she saw her home country through fresh eyes — and it wasn’t what she remembered.

“I was surprised by how intolerant Japan had become,” she says. “There was this new idea of ‘self-responsibility’ that was being talked about everywhere, and the implication seemed to be that the marginalized should find a way to fend for themselves.”

Then, in 2016, one of the worst crimes in Japanese modern history occurred: A 26-year-old man went on a stabbing spree in a care facility for the disabled north of Tokyo, killing 19 and severely injuring 26 others. The killer justified his actions with a shocking string of statements, arguing for a world where the severely disabled could be euthanized to “ease the burden” on their families and society at large.

“I was enraged and thought, if Japan were to accelerate down this path of intolerance, what would it look like?” Hayakawa says. Her conclusion was Plan 75.

Hayakawa’s debut feature, expanded from a 2018 short, imagines a future Japan in which the government has introduced a policy offering all citizens above the age of 75 with an all-expenses-paid voluntary euthanasia service. The program is aggressively marketed to Japan’s elderly as a responsible way to ensure that they don’t become a burden on those around them, and instead help the country address its economically disadvantageous demographics. (Japan is by far the world’s oldest nation, with more than 29 percent of the population 65 or older, compared with 17 percent in the U.S. Facing spiraling budget deficits, the government recently introduced policies to encourage delayed retirement and to trim the country’s relatively generous social safety net.)

Hayakawa says she interviewed 15 elderly Japanese women of various background as research during the film’s development. All of them told her that if a program like Plan 75 existed, they would probably consider it, “because they don’t want to be a burden.”

“In Japanese culture, we are so bound by this idea that you should not trouble other people and that doing so is very inappropriate and shameful,” Hayakawa says. “It makes it almost impossible for us to ask for help,” she adds. “Ultimately, I wanted this film to wake the audience up and remind them to have empathy.”

Unlike much speculative fiction, Plan 75 doesn’t take its concept to absurdist lengths or employ a heightened sci-fi aesthetic. Instead, it unfolds in a frank, social realist style, the impact deepened by how entirely plausible its finely detailed scenarios are.

“People tend to expect the film to be a futuristic sci-fi, but I felt it would be more effective to help the audience imagine that this society is just an extension of our real world today,” she says.

Plan 75 follows an elegant, elderly woman (Chieko Baishô) as her options gradually dwindle: Unlucky in marriage and childless, she has no immediate family to spend time with; her dearest friend passes away abruptly; decent work at her age becomes harder and harder to come by, pushing self-sufficiency out of grasp. Increasingly, society seems to be telling her that Plan 75 is the only sensible option — especially once she meets the cheerful young staff who are there to talk her through the policy’s sales spiel (participants are given a cash payout to settle their final affairs) and onboard her into the program (regular check-in calls, just to chat, help ensure patients don’t have any second thoughts).

Plan 75‘s young recruitment agent is played by the handsome and personable young Japanese actor Hayato Isomura. “I wanted somebody who has this kind face and gentle demeanor as he goes about his job — and yet, what he’s actually doing is recommending people to die,” Hayakawa explains. “It begins as ironical, but becomes more tragic as he awakens to what he’s doing.”

Ultimately, Plan 75 also explores what it means to affirm life when so much of it has been stripped away. “I wanted to show that finding the beauty to live is not something that can be explained in the rational, logical way of economic policy,” Hayakawa says. “Instead, I tried to give it cinematic expression.”