Cimorene

I was truly astounded to encounter a new-to-me form of the pretending to be married trope a couple of weeks ago.

The British film Young Wives' Tale (1951), a romantic comedy (misogyny warning), based on a 1949 play of the same name by Ronald Jeans.

Premise: due to the post-war housing shortage, a young married couple are renting out rooms in the house they own, one of them to another young married couple who have a toddler close in age to their daughter. Even though the renters are home all day (a writer and an actress who quit work to be a "homemaker"), they can't manage between them to watch their own toddler, and the homeowners' nanny quits in a huff over being asked to watch a second kid "as a favor". (I gather they don't bring up sharing the salary because the writer doesn't make enough money to afford it.) The house is thrown into disorder and homeowner Mary hits on the solution: pretend the toddlers are siblings so that the next nanny won't see anything wrong in watching them both. She gets an old-fashioned retired lady and due to Comedy Circumstances, the new nanny gets the idea that the two couples are married the other way around, and they have to continue to pretend after lying to her the first time to keep her from quitting.

While Homeowner Mary is combing the park for nannies to poach, renter Rodney has been reacting to the chaos (his wife is very ADHD), rather than helping, by being angry and going on sexist rants at his wife because she can't cook, clean, and care for both toddlers in the house with him without making noise. He's made her so unhappy that she ends up crying and homeowner Bruce walks in and is trying to comfort her; he's just got done telling her that he thinks her inability to cook is charming because her ADHDness is "womanly", and the fact that she's terrible at housework and is doing it anyway when she was quite a succesful actress shows a touching desire to Be A Good Wife (in contrast to his wife, who is too organized and efficient and not emotional enough) and she kisses him right as the new nanny walks into the room.

At this point I really thought the movie was going to end with the couples switching, because they seemed so obvioiusly ill-suited. Homeowner Bruce resents his wife for not wanting to quit her job and stay home and finds her too cold and unemotional. He admires renter Sabina's absent-mindedness and mood swings (and desire to stay home) as "womanly". Homeowner Mary is exasperated with his attitude. Renter Rodney is exasperated with his wife's absent-mindedness (and harangues her for everything, including a bunch of stuff that is his fault), but admires homeowner Mary's efficiency and ability to remain cool and handle things. Renter Sabina is made miserable by her husband's intolerance of her anbsent-mindedness and moods. They SHOULD have switched. In fact, I think if a movie like this came out in the 1980s or later they probably would have.

Instead they end up apologizing to each other. The homeowner man who was making such a babyish fuss that his wife kept her job only needed to be told that she really does have emotions but she finds it hard to express them, and as soon as he sees her cry he is magically transformed. The Renter Guy has a fit of jealousy (not about the homeowner guy - there's an old boyfriend who remains her friend) and after he gets over it she's like "I really do TRY to cook and do housework" and he is suddenly like "Oh I know it's okay". Not a very good ending. The comedy pace only survives because of a couple of scenes where the nanny catches people kissing their spouses and declares it's a house of infamy and quits.