THE STORY – When cowboy Billi and his sweetheart Rosa run away together, he is accused of her husband’s death and becomes the symbol of a local uprising. Everyone wants his head, and only Rosa knows the secret that could finally set them free.
THE CAST – Nadia Tereszkiewicz, Alessandro Borghi, John C. Reilly, Peter Lanzani, Mirko Artuso, Gabriele Silli & Gianni Garko
THE TEAM – Alessio Rigo de Righi, Matteo Zoppis (Directors/Writers) & Carlo Salsa (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 107 Minutes
In 1890, Buffalo Bill took his popular stage act, which mythologized and romanticized his (largely fictional) exploits, to Europe. While in Italy, he challenged the local cowboys, known as butteri, to a competition with his own men. The Italians won, and one of them, Augusto Imperiali (as symbolic a name as they come in the country that birthed the Roman Empire), became a local hero, complete with comic strips about his deeds in the 1920s. That slice of history serves as the loose inspiration for the premise of “Heads or Tails?”, the sophomore directorial effort of directors Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis, the acclaimed duo who made a splash on the festival circuit in 2021 with their debut “The Tale Of King Crab,” about a drunkard in search of a legendary treasure.
In their retelling, the aforementioned challenge comes about due to a wager between Bill and one of the Italian big shots attending his show, Ercole Rupè. Also in attendance is his French wife, Rosa, who’s enjoying the lavish lifestyle while not being particularly fond of her husband (who implies she used to be a prostitute before they met). A backstage incident with one of the local cowboys, Santino, leads to Rupè’s death, and Rosa chooses to run away with Santino, now wanted for murder, on the initiative of the victim’s father. As they make their way through the desert, Buffalo Bill must live up to his (not entirely factual) reputation by bringing them to justice.
While the words “Italy” and “Western” together generally conjure up a specific image of movies shot in Spain and often scored by the likes of Ennio Morricone, “Heads or Tails?” (a reference to the coin toss, which plays an important part in a couple of scenes) is a genuine Italian Western, set and shot entirely in the country. Specifically, it was filmed in various locations across Lazio and Tuscany in Central Italy, including the Circeo National Park, which doubles for the harshly beautiful vistas serving as the backdrop for the bulk of Rosa and Santino’s life on the run.
And yet, the legacy of the Spaghetti Western era is one the movie reckons with, mainly with the casting of the actor playing the elder Rupè: Gianni Garko, the Croatian-Italian character actor whose main claim to fame was playing the gunfighter Sartana in four of the five movies made about the antihero between 1968 and 1970. As a representative of the old guard in more ways than one, he embodies an entire age of Italian moviemaking with dignified scorn, setting out to punish the newer generation that has put two nations to shame by humiliating the American visitor and slaying a member of Rome’s upper class.
It’s a vibrant, colorful, irreverent adventure that rests primarily on the shoulders of its two main players, who do a great job of walking the line between dramatic subtlety and a cheeky sense of fun. As Rosa, French actress Nadia Tereszkiewicz gets to exhibit a lighter, more playful side once again, the same playfulness that has served her well for collaborations with François Ozon and Monia Chokri and returns with a vengeance for this character who may dress properly but cares very little for what is expected of her in a social context.
Her scene partner is the equally game Alessandro Borghi, who typically excels in dramatic roles (friendship drama “The Eight Mountains” comes to mind) but also has some experience with larger-than-life parts (porn icon Rocco Siffredi in the Netflix miniseries “Supersex”); on this occasion, he gets to have fun playing with the cowboy archetype, creating a charismatic blend of historically accurate characterization and occasional nods to the classic iconography. As the buttero, he adds an earthy quality to the tone of the film, complete with his natural Roman accent as opposed to the standard Italian spoken by his peers when they dubbed Clint Eastwood, Eli Wallach, and the rest of the gang in the Spaghetti Westerns.
Completing the trio is John C. Reilly as Buffalo Bill, a brilliant casting coup as he comfortably slips into the boots of a self-aggrandizing charlatan with a comedically exquisite performance that works on two levels: charismatic enough to fool the characters in-universe and phony enough to allow viewers to see through the empty buzzwords of a showman who suddenly has to become a hero in the real world, much to his own chagrin. Reilly savors every syllable as he sinks his teeth into the contradictions of a dime novel figurehead and consummate thespian who is perhaps the ultimate embodiment of John Ford’s famous “print the legend” maxim (to which Rigo de Righi and Zoppis offer a pretty explicit rebuttal in one specific shot in the third act).
It all comes together in a chaotically controlled fashion to create a dirty yet immaculate journey through the (sort of) desert, a tribute to a genre that is also deconstruction and, at times, parody, with cinephile layers whose efficiency will depend on the individual viewer’s affinity for the various incarnations of the Western. Not everything will land the same way for everyone. Still, the directors’ vision is admirably and joyfully consistent from start to finish, as it embraces even the maddest ideas to guide the story toward its natural, exhilarating conclusion. It cements their status as two strong voices in contemporary European genre filmmaking, capable of finding new ways of bringing the myths, epics, and legends of distant lands closer to home.
