Hesitation Wound

This film was shown at the Revelation Film Festival programme launch for 2024. It's a Turkish legal drama that leaves a lot unsaid, unexplained, with plenty of scope for interpretation. Tülin Özen plays Canan, a lawyer tasked with defending a guy on a murder charge, Musa (Ogulcan Arman Uslu). At the same time, she is dealing with the slow demise of her old mother, hospitalised in a coma. 

The minutiae of life in this small Turkish town is fascinating. There's one simple, prosaic scene where Canan stops by a chemist to buy a razor so Musa can shave for the hearing. The shopkeeper asks what kind, she tells him she doesn't know, he selects for her, then explains that she can't use her debit card for that amount, so she buys some pretzel sticks. Completely normal, yet for some reason, I've remembered this scene weeks later. Maybe it's the unusualness of seeing a Turkish store on screen, but I think the on-point pacing of the film has a lot to do with it. Another odd throughline is how the courthouse is constantly leaking, which comes to a head at a very inopportune moment. Writer/director Selman Nacar had only made one feature before this but he seems to carry the influence of Asghar Farhadi, in this film, at least. 

So, after a bit of googling, I've learnt that hesitation wounds are cuts made on the body of a person who has decided not to commit suicide. This is a clear reference to Musa, who has been through some shit, but it may also point to a wider theme of indecisiveness and fear of committing. (Not pulling the plug on mum, or Canan leaving her small town). 

The two strands of the plot - the murder case and the mother in hospital - travel alongside one another and only show their connection quite late on (maybe a more observant viewer could have seen it coming...). I won't reveal anything but the case judge (Vedat Erincin) has a bit to do with it, and I like the fact that just one strand seems to tie up neatly. The other is left hanging in a satisfyingly open-ended way. We must decide. 

Full of great little touches, naturalistic performances (Özen is brilliant), with a rarely seen 'backyard' (unless you're Turkish), this is a top notch little humanistic drama.

Hesitation Wound is screening as part of the 27th Revelation Perth International Film Festival at Luna cinemas from July 3-14.

See also:

This reminded me of Zaid Doueiri's great The Insult (2017), and, for Turkish style, Nuri Bilge Ceylan's meditative Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2011).