‘Hesitation Wound’: Venice Review

Dir/scr: Salma Nacar. Turkey. 2023. 83mins

Twenty-four hours in the life of a Turkish lawyer fighting both a murder case and her own personal issues reveal the knotty relationship between individual morality and the rule of law. This intimate character study keeps a tight focus on its protagonist, yet also takes in wider issues of insidious corruption and the seeming impossibility of genuine justice. 

Reveals the intrinsic yet tenuous relationship between individual morality and the rule of law

This second feature from Turkish filmmaker Salman Nacar (following 2021’s similarly-themed Between Two Dawns, which premiered at San Sebastián before landing on streamer Mubi) seems likely to pique the interest of outlets looking for strong, authentic female narratives. Nacar is a graduate of both law and film from Istanbul Bilgi University, and here combines those two disciplines with confidence and skill.

Nacar’s attention to detail means that even though the viewer is thrown straight into the middle of lawyer Canan’s (Tulin Ozen) chaotic world, we immediately get a sense of who she is and the competing stresses of her daily life. Dressing smartly in a hospital room where her mother lies comatose, Canan heads straight to the local courtroom in Usak, a port city in Western Turkey, where she is defending a young man, Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu), who has been charged with murdering a local factory boss.

It’s immediately clear that Canan feels overwhelming responsibility for these two lives — that of Musa, a fragile man who vehemently protests his innocence, and her mother, who Canan refuses to believe is braindead despite the doctor’s assertions. Her sister, Belgin (Gulcin Kultur Sahin) is desperate for Canan to co-sign papers that will allow their mother’s organs to be donated. Canan, however, has other reasons for hesitating; the son of the region’s corrupt mayor is high on the transplant list, and she would like to have control over where her beloved mother’s organs end up.

The film’s title may refer to the marks on Musa’s arms, from failed suicide attempts in prison, but it also speaks to Canan’s internal turmoil as she struggles with such overwhelming decisions; stomach ulcers are a physical manifestation of the pressure she is under.

There is a sense that Canan is a woman used to being in control — she studied in the UK and has, until recently, lived and worked in the more metropolitan city of Istanbul. She certainly finds herself something of a fish out of water back in this dusty municipality, where prominent local men seem to make all the rules and her professional methods are regarded as foreign. Not only that, everything around her seems to be in a state of half-repair; the local mosque lost its gold minaret in a recent storm (somewhat presciently, the weather is a constant threat even though the film shot in Usak in March 2022, a year before the davastating earthquakes) and the courtroom is under permanent construction. 

When the building’s roof caves in as Canan is delivering her impassioned closing argument in defence of Musa, this shocking interruption marks something of a turning point. From here, Canan’s self-assurance begins to blur around the edges as she discovers further details about Musa’s case and the exploitation of his family, and is forced to confront her own domestic situation. As moral threads start to unravel, Ozen gives a layered performance allowing glimpses of a vulnerability which increasingly threatens to surface. Other characters don’t make quite so much of an an impact, although Uslu is quietly sympathetic as the accused Musa, even if his character is something of a cypher for the impact of high-level corruption on ordinary folk.

In keeping with his naturalistic approach, Nacar eschews any formal soundtrack in favour of an aural soundscape from sound designer Ismael Calvo Delgad which focuses in on the beeps of hospital machinery, the rustle of legal papers, the defiant click of heels on a corridor. Editing is sharp and urgent, underscoring the frantic pace of Canan’s life, her desperate fight for change, while longer-held shots —  one in particular, tight on Canan’s solitary unravelling in a hospital canteen— pack a punch.