★★★☆☆
A knockout premise meets an execution that’s mostly tentative jabs in this intriguing Japanese social satire. The writer-director Chie Hayakawa, making her feature debut, sets the film in an alternative present where the cash-strapped Japanese state, burdened to breaking point by an ageing population, offers free euthanasia to all citizens of 75 and older.
On paper it has geriatric Logan’s Run potential, but Hayakawa instead delivers a grounded mood piece, like an Ozu melodrama (Tokyo Story especially) that traces the intersecting lives of three characters drawn to the cold reality of “Plan 75”. The most empathetic of these is Michi (Chieko Baisho), an elderly chambermaid who carries herself with dignity but is slowly reconciled to the idea of ending her existence in a government-sponsored gas chamber.
Japanese society, corporate culture and the state apparatus are all implicated here. But the unremarkable message the movie ultimately sells, especially in a sweet closing scene, is: seize the day.
15, 113min
In cinemas and on Curzon Home Cinema
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