52 Films by Women Vol 7. 40. PLAN 75 (Director: Chie Hayakawa)
Contains spoilers. In her debut feature, Plan 75 , Japanese co-writer-director Chie Hayakawa imagines a government-sponsored programme of voluntary euthanasia for citizens aged seventy-five and over. This section of society is considered a burden on the young and, in Hayakawa’s film at least, the subject of hate crimes. In the film’s arresting opening, in which the drama is initially out of focus, a young man kills an older person before he washes his hands (in focus); we note the camera on his forehead, as if live streaming his actions. We then see him read out the remainder of his manifesto and before turning his shotgun on himself. Hayakawa then introduces seventy-eight-year-old cleaning woman, Michi Kakutani (Chieko Baish ô ) who works in a hotel. She continues to contribute to society though has no family – we learn that her baby died in childbirth, strangled by the umbilical cord. Michi expresses an interest in the programme for reasons that are not exactly clear; it is a...