‘Hesitation Wound’ Review: A Pitch-Perfect Character Study Explores the Vagaries of Justice

Canan, the hardworking legal-eagle protagonist of Hesitation Wound, moves through drab institutional corridors with such determination that she creates a kind of force field around her. Or maybe it’s armor. In the courthouse where she spends a good part of her waking hours, she’s trying to save an accused man from the possibility of life imprisonment. In the hospital where she spends her nights, she’s looking for reasons to keep her mother on life support, despite the certainty of the doctor — and, more to the point, of Canan’s sister — that it’s time to let go.

Unfolding at the intersection of regulatory procedure, moral urgency and heartache, Selman Nacar’s finely tuned second feature, after the workplace drama Between Two Dawns, packs a sustained wallop of tension and unraveling into its impressively concise running time. Tülin Özen, in the lead role, delivers a pitch-perfect, tightly contained performance as an astute professional who hasn’t time for own vulnerability.

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It isn’t until almost half an hour into the movie that the phrase “murder in the first degree” is uttered. But the gravity of the case that consumes most of Canan’s day is evident well before that detail emerges, her every gesture and glance flashing high-intensity purpose and impatience. Things are different, though, when she’s preparing the soft-spoken Musa (Oğulcan Arman Uslu) for the final session of his trial. The nerves beneath her skin might not have relaxed, but on the surface she’s calm and reassuring, almost maternal in her exchanges with the former factory worker. A man of few words who maintains his innocence in the killing of his onetime boss, Musa waits until well into the proceedings to reveal crucial background information to Canan. It’s one of several bombshells that land in the attorney’s lap during a challenging day.

Hesitation Wound’s events, in the Turkish city of Uşak, transpire over a period of less than 24 hours, beginning at dawn, when a bus collects Musa from the prison outside town. The blue of that early morning light courses through the film, including its workaday interiors (the excellent, unobtrusive production design is by Meral Aktan). It’s as if a sadness has seeped through everything, although it will take Canan a while to let herself feel it. The rental car she’s using while hers is in the shop insists on playing Vivaldi every time she starts the engine, and each time that happens she promptly switches off the unasked-for surge of feeling.

The astute camerawork by Tudor Vladimir Panduru (My Happy Family) tracks Canan every hell-bent step of her frequently derailed day. She pops antacid tablets for her ulcer, is repeatedly caught without cash because who has time to go to the bank, and she takes fleeting stock of a courtroom office in disarray thanks to a ceiling leak — something’s always seeping through.

Canan is understandably standoffish when fielding the jibes and unsolicited career advice of the opposing side’s attorney. Sometimes, even within the life-and-death circumstances, her laser focus borders on the comical: When she tries to track down a key witness for the defense who’s gone MIA, she barely acknowledges the friendly overtures of the strangers she encounters, and refuses to engage with the talkative villager who offers to show her where the man lives.

At the garage that has apparently been working on Canan’s car for many days, if not weeks, the helmer slips in sidelong glances at posters announcing “Changing Uşak, Smiling Uşak” (uşak, for what it’s worth, means “servant” or “henchman”). It’s a sly nod to municipal boosterism, the bitter irony deepened by Musa’s revelations about the murdered factory owner, the local police, and the age-old dirty business of money and power.

The way Panduru frames the one moment when Canan truly relaxes is as expressive and precise as it is unadorned: Settling down to sleep beside the hospital bed where her mother lies unconscious, she’s transformed, tranquility softening her features. Otherwise, the hospital scenes that punctuate the legal drama are filled with uneasiness between sisters Canan and Belgin (Gülçin Kültür Şahin, excellent) in their changing-of-the-guard between day and night shifts. “Face it,” Belgin urges her reluctant sibling, arguing reasonably that ending life support is the right thing to do, and time-sensitive if organs are to be donated. “Mom’s still here,” Canan counters, clinging in her lawyerly way to such evidence as the recent movement of their mother’s fingers.

And then there are the sibling frictions of the universal sort: the question of sacrifice vs. selfishness — in this case, of who stayed in Uşak and was there for Mom, and who left to fulfill personal goals. Married mother Belgin is the prosecutor in this scenario, accomplished career woman Canan the defendant. Even in court, the judge can’t resist a snide comment about her U.K. education.

Whether it’s a matter of schooling, talent or temperament, when Canan delivers her closing statements, she shreds the other side’s arguments, her impassioned clarity in full, ferocious flow and stoppable only by a sudden mini-calamity (and the courtroom’s deadpan response to the resulting mess). Through Canan’s eyes and Özen’s breathtaking performance, writer-director Nacar, a former law student, peels away the forensic assumptions of an open-and-shut case, from the matter of motivation to the mysterious unavailability of certain surveillance footage.

But it’s another matter entirely whether counterarguments, or truth itself, can keep Canan from the precipice that’s looming into view, or pull Musa back from utter despair. Nacar closes the film with a one-two punch that strikes deep. First there’s a wordless moment of rapprochement, stirring in its simplicity. And then there’s Uşak, viewed from a distance for the first time since the movie’s opening sequence. Panduru’s camera glides back, away from the city. And there’s Vivaldi’s Nisi Dominus again, and with no knob to turn or button to press for silence, the psalm’s exquisite ache unfurls.