Hair salons are sacred spaces. Where else could one catch up on the latest neighborhood gossip and engage in mindless chit-chat, while getting treated to a wash, trim and blow-out? But in “Paradise Now“ director Hany Abu-Assad’s restrained yet gripping “Huda’s Salon,” a feminist political thriller whose philosophical observations are richer than its white-knuckle moments, the titular Bethlehem joint secretly operates as something other than a pampering safe haven. Reem (Maisa Abd Elhadi) doesn’t know this as she takes a seat at Huda’s (Manal Awad) modest place on an especially quiet day, before her innocent little excursion costs her a great deal of irreversible trouble.

It all starts cordially enough between the two Palestinian women, a pair of friends and allies who’ve put up with their own share of patriarchal nonsense, both inside their families and on a macro level, within the oppressed Palestine long occupied by Israeli forces. Labored title cards give us a redundant glimpse into why the occupation has been especially tough for women. And yet in the film’s impressive long-take opening, Huda’s grievances sound like the commonplace kind you could hear anywhere. “These days, everyone thinks they can be a hairdresser themselves because of YouTube videos,” she complains about her salon’s shrinking business. The sequence’s immersive nature persists as Reem’s baby pleasantly coos in her pram and Reem casually laments about her marital hardships with her controlling husband Yousef (Jalal Masarwa). You can tell from their closeness that the duo has done this countless times before. So why exactly does Huda drizzle a substance in Reem’s coffee then, and coldly watch the young woman as her consciousness fades away?

In her salon’s backroom, we swiftly discover the reason. A longtime traitor servicing the Israeli secret service under the nose of the Palestinian resistance, Huda fully strips off Reem’s clothes and photographs the unconscious woman in compromising positions alongside a nude male model who’s clearly well-versed in his paid schtick. “Call my contact Musa with information from time to time,” Huda demands from her latest recruit once she wakes up in utter shock and confusion. And if the brand-new mother doesn’t want to participate in the machination? Well, she will at least keep her mouth shut in a conservative society where a scandalous photo of sexual nature could bring bigger ruin on a woman’s life than any sort of political betrayal.

With a hiding spot full of such photographs she used to blackmail others — so many, in fact, that there could be enough material there for a fascinating TV series — Huda knows by sheer experience how it goes for the women of her society. Why else would she use her femininity as a weapon in front of unsuspecting eyes and put herself at great risk as an unexceptional spy? As we hear from this hardened double-crosser later on — when she gets captured by the resistance shortly after attempting to poach Reem — she had to do what she had to do in order to survive as a vulnerable mother with only cruel options.

The wonderful Awad charges Huda’s evolving stance with an earned sense of nonchalant wisdom as she gets interrogated by Hasan (a quietly imposing Ali Suliman), a man who doesn’t buy the dispassionate Huda’s victimhood claim. Neither do we, truth be told. But Abu-Assad is such a gifted writer that we can’t blatantly hate or judge her either. In the end, what does Hasan know about a Middle Eastern woman’s daily battles? To his credit, he at least considers Huda’s position once she reminds him they don’t live in an idyllic, pro-woman country like Sweden. Thanks to their complex chemistry, these scenes stand as some of the film’s strongest as Huda approaches her inevitable fate.

Elsewhere, we continue following Reem as her life turns upside-down in an increasingly claustrophobic home where the playfully soft-spoken and yet maddeningly suspicious Yousef circles her like a shark. What is the helpless mother to do? Open up to her cowardly husband who is unlikely to believe her? Call Huda’s contact? Ask help from the resistance? Abu-Assad navigates Reem’s altered reality sure-handedly, nimbly familiarizing the audience both with her stalled marriage and her suffocatingly traditional friends and extended family members unsympathetic to her emotional struggles. Elhadi is simply riveting as her doe-like exterior morphs into something tougher, as she comes to understand she has nothing but her own resources to trust.

On the whole, Abu-Assad is less successful in braiding the respective tales of Reem and Huda through Eyas Salman’s editing. But eventually the seams show and clumsy jumps between the two locations feel strangely episodic, losing “Huda’s Salon” some of the urgency it has claimed in its earlier moments. Still, this handsome film serves as a sobering reminder that in any type of conflict, women tend to get the short end of the stick. And in an awful world full of contradictions, everyone has their reasons.