The Wild West appears to be like tame beside the lawless, mindless Continental plains and sierras of “Heads or Tails?,” an enjoyably off-kilter Euro-western that honors the stylistic and structural traditions of the style whereas occupying its personal actuality fully. The second characteristic from Italian directing duo Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis incorporates a rogue outlaw cowboy, a gutsy, pistol-toting widow and Buffalo Invoice Cody himself — all variously on the unfastened in a suitably parched stretch of northern Italy. But when these sound like customary elements for an old-school oater, or perhaps a Leone-era spaghetti joint, this sui generis merchandise takes a flip for the eccentric even earlier than it pivots into outright surrealism.
One of many extra irreverent titles at this yr’s Cannes competition — the place it premiered within the Un Sure Regard strand — “Heads or Tails?” is looser and loopier than de Righi and Zoppis’ cultish 2021 competition hit “The Story of King Crab,” which was already a lot playful. An elegantly rustic fable, that movie leaned on the pair’s documentary background because it gathered regional lore and translated it into fanciful cinematic fiction. Their follow-up retains that curiosity within the shaggy, variable nature of folkloric storytelling, right down to a framing gadget that presents the occasions on display as dictated by Cody to a dogged private secretary. And as performed by a brash, blustering John C. Reilly — impressed casting that can enhance distributor curiosity on this bilingual Italo-American manufacturing — the historic showman is right here long-established because the least dependable of narrators.
The American icon is launched removed from his dwelling frontier, touring his famed touring rodeo circus round Europe (enjoying itself, in a break from spaghetti-western custom, quite than approximating the American desert) on the flip of the twentieth century. The story is spurred by a real-life incident, when Cody’s males have been challenged by a gaggle of cattle-herding Italian butteri to a type of cowboy duel — handily gained by the latter, from whom alpha buttero Augusto Imperioli emerged as an area folks hero.
Within the movie’s model of occasions, Imperioli turns into Santino (“The Eight Mountains” star Alessandro Borghi), a swaggeringly good-looking and dumb-as-rocks stockman who wins the competition — and in flip, a wholesome sum for playing Italian nobleman Rupè (Mirko Artuso), who guess Cody the house crew would prevail. On the similar time, Santino catches the wandering eye of Rupè’s younger spouse Rosa (rising French star Nadia Tereszkiewicz), who desperately needs out of her abusive trophy marriage. One close-range bullet later, Rupè is useless whereas Rosa and Santino flee into the wilderness, with a hefty value on the triumphant rider’s head — and Cody, opportunistically turned bounty hunter, in not-so-hot pursuit.
It’s right here that the movie’s curiosity in legend-building comes narratively into play, as Santino embraces his sudden new standing as outlaw and sophistication warrior, all for a criminal offense he can’t actually declare to have dedicated. A rollicking musical sequence wherein he boasts of his personal ill-earned fame is a excessive level in a movie that repeatedly weaves music into its tapestry of tale-spinning — accentuated by the stark, naive strumming and plucking of Vittorio Giampietro’s rating — with Cody usually editorializing proceedings together with his personal hearty crooning. (Reilly, by no means reluctant to indicate off his musical chops, additionally contributes unique compositions.) Amid this conflict of inflated, self-mythologizing male egos, it’s Rosa who acts most intrepidly, to no nice acclaim. It was ever thus.
Whereas Reilly, amusingly enjoying Cody as a cod-poetic blowhard, will get to do essentially the most flamboyant scenery-chewing, it’s Tereszkiewicz and Borghi who shoulder the majority of the movie as runaway lovers sure by little greater than a passing, deadly whim. Each absolutely look the a part of their respective style archetypes — Borghi particularly, together with his sky-blue scowl and sandy stubble, was born to do no less than one Italian horse opera in his profession — whereas their performances undercut these expectations from the within out. Borghi’s cowboy is all hole puff and wilting resolve, whereas Tereszkiewicz performs Rosa neither as feisty dame nor damsel in misery: As a substitute she’s terse and guarded, even when capturing a person’s testicles off with fearsome precision.
Rosa’s quiet nerve equips her higher than different characters for a completely unhinged ultimate act, which shifts the register from folks story to grownup fairytale, wherein common guidelines of life, dying and motive not apply. This shift into extra fantastical terrain leaves the historically lean human dynamics of the western far behind, and will divide audiences.
But “Heads or Tails?” pulls it off, largely as a result of the scrubby, sunbaked textures of its story world stay so vividly constant. Capturing totally on movie of various inventory, DP Simone D’Arcangelo authentically honors each the tawny fantastic thing about the movie’s real-life panorama and the earthy severity of the continent-mixing Leone-land that impressed de Righi and Zoppis — and even serves up among the blushing, saturated Campari sunsets of extra romanticized Hollywood westerns, minus any true heroes to journey off into them.
