Heads or Tails?
Much like Buffalo Bill’s travelling circus of Americana, Alessio Rigo de Righi and Matteo Zoppis’s Heads or Tails? (Testa o croce?) unfolds as a performance in chapters – each act introduced by the self-mythologising voice of Bill himself (John C. Reilly), who looms over the film like a ringmaster turned unreliable historian. This structure – cleverly lifted from the man’s own real-life shows – allows the story to flit between past and present, myth and memory, fiction and hard dust-bitten fact.
Set in the Italian countryside at the dawn of the 20th century, the movie offers a playful, poignant mirror of an American Dream rooted in wide frontiers and blood-soaked justice – but transposed to Italy’s equally turbulent post-unification landscape. Rosa (Nadia Tereszkiewicz), a young woman trapped in a suffocating marriage to a nobleman, is not just a woman on the run with a romantic outlaw. She’s immediately reminiscent of Jill McBain – all windswept hair and weary glamour – carving out her own wild west with bounties and whispered legends.
The parallels are rich. While America tamed its wilderness with railroads and six-shooters, Italy too was laying tracks of its own. Rosa’s politically influential father-in-law (Gianni Garko) stands as a clear reflection of the robber barons, his aspirations of a unified Italy echoing the same restless spirit that drove Manifest Destiny. There’s grandeur in the endless countryside – all cracked soil and golden haze – unmistakably reminiscent of Once Upon a Time in the West (1968).
On the other hand, the central romance of Heads or Tails? carries far less conviction. Santino (Alessandro Borghi), the farmhand at Rosa’s husband’s estate who once bested Buffalo Bill’s cowboys in wrangling wild horses, looks the part – but his lack of chemistry with Rosa renders their romance unconvincing. Their dalliance never quite escapes the shadow of plot necessity; ultimately, it is Rosa’s journey alone – not their shared escape – that holds the true heart of the film.
Despite its occasional lapses, it ends on a striking final note. Rosa, now a fugitive legend forged by her own defiant will, carves out a wild west of her own making – one where myths are lived rather than told – as Buffalo Bill’s voice fades into the distance, swallowed by the hills.
Christina Yang
Heads or Tails? does not have a release date yet.
Read more reviews from our Cannes Film Festival coverage here.
For further information about the event visit the Cannes Film Festival website here.
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