PLAN 75

A Don’t-Miss Cannes 2022 Selection

Venue(s): Shinjuku Piccadilly: 050-6861-3011
From July 10 (Sun), 2022: 11:05—, July 11 (Mon), 2022: 08:10—
Language: In Japanese with English
Official website: happinet-phantom.com/plan75/
Theater website: www.smt-cinema.com/site/shinjuku/index.html
Theater website: www.smt-cinema.com/site/shinjuku/
Tariff: Visit theater site for details.
Advance tickets: https://bit.ly/3NRbKRi for July 10 screening

Title: PLAN 75 (PLAN 75)
Director: Chie Hayakawa (早川千絵)
Duration: 112 min

After a sold-out run following its heralded world premiere and Special Mention honor at the 2022 Cannes Film Festival, Chie Hayakawa’s Plan 75 is finally available with English subtitles for two early-morning screenings in Tokyo. With spare dialogue, exquisite cinematography and performances of great restraint, the film offers a heartrending — yet potentially hopeful vision — of where Japanese society might be headed. Once seen, you will find it impossible to shake off its spell.

Politically astute and emotionally resonant, Hayakawa’s film expands on her acclaimed opening segment in the anthology film Ten Years Japan (2018), it posits a time in Japan’s not-so-distant future, when longevity has become an economic liability. Dragged down by the aging population, the government hits upon an easily implemented, cost-effective solution: offer the elderly and disenfranchised the option of no-fuss, no-mess assisted suicide. Unfettered by the usual stifling bureaucracy, Plan 75 makes euthanasia hard to resist.

Star Chieko Baisho is active senior when we first meet her, but eventually, her path crosses that of a pleasant young Plan 75 salesman (Hayato Isomura) and the writing’s on the wall. The salesman does begin to have second thoughts, however; and so does a Filipina caregiver (Stefanie Arianne), who takes a much-needed higher-paying job and must now provide after-death services at the Plan 75 elimination station.

This exceptional film, with its elegant but horrifying solution to the graying population problem, is essential viewing.

Shinjuku Piccadilly