The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom is a 1968 British romantic comedy starring Shirley MacLaine, Richard Attenborough, and James Booth as a trio engaged in an unusual affair. Surprisingly, it is Very Loosely Based on a True Story, though the real events took a much darker turn than the light-hearted movie.
Robert Blossom is a Married to the Job manufacturer of brassieres. His devotion to his work frequently leaves his artistic, romantic-minded wife Harriet lonely and neglected at home. All this changes when Robert sends his bumbling employee Ambrose Tuttle to repair Harriet's sewing machine, leading to a torrid affair. When Robert arrives home unexpectedly, Harriet stashes Ambrose in the attic, telling him to leave in secret in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, Ambrose has become enamored with the captivating, kind-hearted Harriet and decides instead to set up housekeeping in the attic, over Harriet's objections.
During the day, Harriet and Ambrose enjoy each other's company. By night, Ambrose enriches his mind with Teach Yourself books, which he secretly uses to help Robert grow his business empire. Meanwhile, Robert, certain that something peculiar is happening in his home but unable to prove it, fears he is losing his mind.
With Scotland Yard on the case of the missing Ambrose, the arrangement seems doomed to unravel—and eventually, it does, in the wildest, most psychedelic, hilarious way possible.
Tropes associated with the film include:
- Agent Peacock: Detective Sergeant Dylan comes across as mincing and effete, but he's every inch a determined detective who believes foul play is afoot. In the end, his extraordinary efforts do solve the mystery, even though his theory is proven wrong.
- Breast Expansion: Robert's new experimental line of bras. They work so well that his models begin to rise and float away from the runway.
- Brownface: Ambrose disguises himself as Harriet's Mexican half-brother Juan, complete with brownface makeup, to throw Detective Dylan off the trail.
- Gadgeteer's House: Ambrose is able to convert the bare attic into a luxurious lair with secret automatic stairs and accoutrements that conceal themselves into the walls at the touch of a button.
- Great Big Book of Everything: Harriet supplies Ambrose with Teach Yourself books that allow him to become an expert at every skill from carpentry to electrical wiring to gourmet cooking to business management.
- Here We Go Again!: At the end of the film, Harriet conceals her ex-husband Robert in the basement as her new extramarital lover.
- Hidden Depths:
- Robert, outwardly a stolid, boring businessman, secretly longs to be a musician.
- Ambrose, an uneducated orphan, becomes a multidisciplinary master once he's finally allowed to pursue his education in the attic.
- Inspector Javert: Dylan becomes totally focused on solving Ambrose's disappearance, to the point that he harasses Harriet almost daily in hopes of catching her in a lie.
- May–December Romance: Robert is a decade older than his wife, who is in turn older than her lover Ambrose.
- Not Distracted by the Sexy: Robert is so focused on running the best possible business that he regards the scantily-clad underwear models who wander around his workplace as no different from any other employee.
- Renaissance Man: Ambrose goes from a bumbling, uneducated orphan into one of these with the help of a library of Teach Yourself books, picking up more self-confidence with every new skill he acquires. By the end of the film, he's more than capable of stepping into Robert's shoes to run his business empire.
- Sanity Slippage: Whenever Robert finds evidence that someone else is living in his home, Harriet convinces him he's imagining things, causing him to believe he's losing his mind.
- Sexual Euphemism: A rare visual example. All of Harriet and Ambrose's lovemaking is portrayed in elaborate costumed fantasy sequences in which Harriet is a damsel in distress whom a heroic Ambrose rescues.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: In spite of their genuine affection for one another, Harriet and Ambrose come to feel guilty at the toll their affair is taking on Robert, whom they agree is a good man who has done nothing to deserve this. Subverted in the film's climax, where Harriet, now married to Ambrose, takes her ex-husband Robert as her secret lover, apparently behind Ambrose's back.
