To mark Equal Pay Day Europe, Belgian agency Mortierbrigade has created a rather unsettling film starring a young man and his older bride, in which the financially unfruitful death of the latter acts as a call to pay women more cash while they’re still alive.
With a soundtrack from Kid Francescoli album With Julia, ‘Close the pay gap, close the pension gap’ follows a young man and his much older wife from marriage to her final days as a feeble pensioner.
The man is shown washing, feeding and caring for his elderly spouse – as well as planting marbles on the stairs. In the following shot, blood pouring from her lifeless corpse at the bottom of the steps implies his plan for uxoricide has been successful.
His comeuppance comes in the form of his inheritance, which comes to less than €100. As he looks at his lawyer in frustration, the line reads: ‘Increase your inheritance. Close the gender pay gap’.
Mortierbrigade, an indie shop based in Brussels, said in a statement that the film was created to ‘denounce the inequality’ between the size of male and female pensions. In Belgium, the agency reports, women’s pensions amount to 39% less than men’s on average.