The brass teapot - 2013

It ended well. I wasn't at all sure, I feared much darker depths of darkness. It was dark, in a way, painful here and there, but I'm glad I saw it. I'm not sure I want to see it again, though. Maybe in some time. I mean it when I say it was rather painful.  The story: John (Michael Angarano) works in a call center until he's fired. His wife Alice (Juno Temple) doesn't have a job because she wants to find one suitable for her career ambitions. I knew I was about to see what kind of characters they were when I saw Arnie coming to collect the rent. He told Alice that in school she was voted 'the most likely to succeed' or something like that, but then John happened to her. John comes on his bike, she asks him to tell her he got a big promotion and wants to take her out to dinner to celebrate. He replies he found a bonus ticket and brought her sandwiches to eat. I felt this moment was important, right when it was happening. Is she going to resent him for their life? What will she say? I'm glad to say that she laughed and kissed him, and I was relieved, but the real movie is yet to start. They are completely broke, and none of them has a job. One day they have an accident, and Alice sees an old woman holding a brass teapot. She feels drawn to this teapot, somehow, so she enters the Antique-shop and steals it. She soon learns the teapot's secret. It's magical. Alice accidentally burns herself while ironing her hair and in the teapot appears: money! Real money! She hurts herself again, on purpose, and puff: money again. She can't believe it, this will solve all their money problems, she thinks. She has John touch the teapot too, so now it works for him too. They start hurting themselves to gain 'easy' money. John is worried but Alice wants to finally have money, to change her life. They can buy a big house, now. A car, jewels, whatever they want. Problems start when two men come and steal their cash money, claiming the teapot was their grandma's, she stole it from Hitler. This doesn't stop Alice's greed. She wants more money. When the teapot starts giving out five dollars notes instead of one hundred dollars ones, they learn that it gives money whenever they are near someone who is in pain, so they take it to a fight match, near a woman giving birth, stuff like that. When they're out of ideas, she nearly runs a man over with her car, but John turns the wheel in time to prevent it. She tells him something hurtful in her anger, and learns that it also works with emotional pain. She insists so they start revealing each other's painful secrets to hurt themselves. This could destroy a couple, but they love each other, and she tells him one day that she's never been this honest with anyone else in her life. Out of secrets, they start revealing other people's secrets to hurt them. One day they go to her sister's house. Her secret is that her oldest son is not her husband's. He thinks he is, but he's not. This could ruin an entire family, they have other children now and she's pregnant again, but luckily at the last moment Alice can't do it. Instead she says she envies their happy family. I was glad, that would have been a terrible thing to do now. I mean, the woman should not have lied about it, the man had a right to know, but not now, not like this, it would have caused so much pain. Still, back home Alice is angry with herself for not going through with it. John is glad, but she doesn't have enough. She proposes one last big thing: to kill a pedophile. They even start digging a hole to bury him in, but John has had enough of it all, he tries to stop her, to make her reason, but she won't.
At the question: what would she choose between him and the teapot she goes on digging, so he goes away. He goes to professor Ling for help. His family has been looking for it for generations, he wants to hide it where nobody can ever find it. John asks for his help, but Ling says that they have to give it up voluntarily, together. John thinks of what he can do to save Alice from it. He goes back home, takes the teapot and waits for her by the window. Understanding her words are empty, she's not really ready to give it up, he throws himself out of the window. She screams in pain and runs to him. Not to the teapot, but to him, crying and calling for him. He's not dead, and now she truly promises to give it up, but that night Arnie sneaks in and steals it. She's relieved they're now free of it, but John realizes 'they gave the ring back to Sauron', metaphorically speaking :-D so they go to get it back. Arnie has already learned its secret, the roulotte-house is full of money and blood. Arnie and his wife have fireweapons, but luckily for our protagonists the two men come again for their grandma's teapot. Alice and John hide while the four of them kill themselves. They're all dead, now. Alice realizes that it could have been them, so Alice and John take the teapot and voluntarily give it to professor Ling, who will then throw it in the ocean. Good.
Alice wants to give up the big house and everything they bought because they were actually happier in the simpler life they had before. They give the money to a friend that needs it and go away together. Their story ends with the two of them on the road, with presumably no money (unless they kept some, I'm not sure how much they had), lots of love and a baby on the way :-) Wow, it was a close call but they came out of it whole and good. Great.
What a terrible thing that object, most people on this world would lose their mind with such a thing. Very, very few people could keep their mind straight and be the same person they thought there were before having it.

In Italy: Botte di fortuna  -  I don't like this title at all.