InRO Weekly — Volume 1, Issue 16

FILM REVIEWS
way of alleviating the nation’s aging problem. The state-funded
euthanasia program, curtly titled “Plan 75,” is neat, sumptuous,
and deeply professional: for the price of free, and even with a
thousand US dollars as monetary incentive, participants enjoy a
few tele-counseling sessions (capped at fifteen minutes each), a
couple of warm “deluxe” meals, and, on D-Day itself, the dignity of
performing one last service to their country by donning a small
gas mask at one of the designated centers and slipping slowly
into quiet, untroubled sleep. But despite its sociological
dimensions, Chie Hayawaka’s debut is a deeply personal study of
those affected by the program, whether as provider, patient, or
loved one. Plan 75 marks its relevance with a masterful and
well-calibrated narrative of the individuals who live and persist
within, and often despite, the workings of dystopia.
Belying the courtesy of many a consult between management
and prospective candidates is a clinical valuation of life and
purpose. The bulk of applicants who sign themselves up for
euthanasia are retired, live alone, and do not have or see their
children much, and so are discharged by and large from purpose.
This statistic makes up the starting point of Plan 75, but it does
not consign the film itself to clinicality. If anything, the stoic,
weathered faces of the elderly serve as ciphers for… it’s anyone’s
guess — distress, resignation, humiliation, and perhaps a
smattering of pride may color their cheeks as they make the final
arrangements, either in solitude or with friends. Michi (Chieko
Baisho), a septuagenarian recently laid off from her job as a hotel
cleaner, contemplates doing so only after her landlord evicts her
and she cannot find alternate accommodation. Hiromo (Hayato
Isomura), a young Plan 75 bureaucrat, encounters his estranged
uncle filing an application to die. Their pathways barely intersect,
but underscoring them both is a pathos that shirks histrionics for
quiet honesty.
This honesty is further bolstered by Hayakawa’s decision not to
mount an overly theoretical examination of Plan 75’s macabre
cultural consensus. Such an examination could work elsewhere,
perhaps, but implanting it here would likely risk caricaturing the
motivations and lived experiences of its characters. Instead, the
film shores up their humanity against the detached gaze of
social engineering stretched to its utilitarian conclusion, even
depicting the travails of Maria (Stefanie Arianne), a Filipino
caretaker who signs up to dispose the bodies and possessions of
the dead as a means to support herself and her ailing young
daughter. Amidst these otherwise unformed portraits of a moral
epidemic come two sobering realizations: that collective
loneliness easily cascades into conformity, and that this
conformity is closer to home than expected. Inspired in part by
the real-life massacre of nineteen care-home residents in 2016
and the comments made by Yūsuke Narita — an economist and
Yale University professor — on the prospect of mass suicide, Plan
75 may proffer too few satisfying resolutions for some and too
casual a fictionalization of contemporary demographic
projections for others, but its humanist renderings of an
otherwise apathetic world are accomplished and deeply moving.
— MORRIS YANG
DIRECTOR: Chie Hayakawa; CAST: Chieko Baishô, Hayato
Isomura, Stefanie Arianne; DISTRIBUTOR: KimStim; IN
THEATERS: April 21; RUNTIME: 1 hr. 52 min.
CARMEN
Benjamin Millepied
A beguiling amalgam of classic opera sensibility, modern dance
performance, and Badlands-esque, lovers-on-the-run romantic
tragedy, Benjamin Millepied’s Carmen is a deeply idiosyncratic
and electrifying film that nonetheless struggles to locate a
governing artistic cogency. Very loosely inspired by Georges
Bizet’s seminal opera, Millepied’s film takes more spiritual than
material inspiration from that work, recalculating its narrative to
befit our present age. In an intoxicating opening sequence, a
woman dances on an empty stage set in the middle of a barren
and dusty Mexican desert. A car penetrates the scene, two
gun-toting men hopping out to demand the whereabouts of a
she. The woman defiantly finishes her dance, and is promptly
shot in the head. Nearby, Carmen (Melissa Barrera) hears the
gunshots, understands her mother is dead, and continues on her
trek to and across the U.S. border. Meanwhile, Aidan (Paul
Mescal), a marine who seems to be struggling to adjust to
non-deployment, heads out into the dark to commence his first
evening of volunteer border patrol duty. When a gung-ho buddy
reveals his motivations to be purely homicidal, Aidan intervenes,
saving Carmen’s life and tethering the two as marked fugitives.
And so, off they go, headed to Los Angeles, where Carmen hopes
to find freedom and a connection to her past.
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