Ayoade on Top

by Richard Ayoade

We will never know because, unfortunately, there isn’t a timeline in which Sliding Doors was never made.

The idea that Donna eats carbs is, undoubtedly, the funniest moment in the film. On my first viewing, I was so convulsed with mirth that I almost missed the diegetic doorbell.

TED: And what happens after the camera cuts away? DONNA: That’s liminal space, Ted. TED: What goes on in liminal space stays in liminal space, right?

It’s such a sparkling scene in its own right that one barely sees its plot function. That’s why we get a second scene right after it to consolidate its hidden message.

Given that Ted is enrolled at law school, how surprising is it that he will become a lawyer? I’d go so far as to say that it would be more surprising if he didn’t become a lawyer.

Why does everything have to be said in this supposedly (you now have three seconds to secure your stomachs …) ‘sexy’ way? Donna can’t even ask for legal advice without it being interpreted as innuendo.

This is essentially the theme of Phantom Thread, Paul Thomas Anderson’s mushroom omelette dramedy.

One man’s Michelangelo is another man’s Milli Vanilli.

If you aren’t on the absolute precipice of your seat by now, you’ve lost your adrenal glands.

I have something in common with Ted Stewart: I, too, studied law at university. And to the amazement of all who taught me, I graduated. I have, out of respect to The Law, never practised it, nor made any attempt to understand it.

I’m not saying we don’t need lawyers. But that’s only because I’ve been legally advised not to make that statement.

At school, I was so obsessed with The Catcher in the Rye that I started to dress like Holden Caulfield. In the novel, Holden buys a red hunting hat in New York, after he loses all his goddam fencing gear on the goddam subway. I never lost all my goddam fencing gear, nor did I ever possess any goddam fencing gear, but I did resolve to get myself a red hunting hat, which Holden wears all the goddam time.

SHOP ASSISTANT: How long have you been paintballing? YOUNG RICHARD: Why would you assume I paintball? SHOP ASSISTANT: I suppose I took the red target on your cap as an indication … YOUNG RICHARD: That I was a paintballer separated from the group, now hopelessly lost? SHOP ASSISTANT: … YOUNG RICHARD: Well, I’m not. SHOP ASSISTANT: … YOUNG RICHARD: I’m clearly an avid reader of post-war American literature.

Because to be moved by something made by someone who has done something bad would mean that a bad person possesses the capacity to connect to us; that they haven’t, somehow, forfeited their humanity.

Here’s a Times obituary you’ll never read: ‘As great a rock star as he was, he was perhaps an even greater husband.’ No one who achieved anything was ‘there’ for someone else. They were elsewhere. Achieving.

Donna reiterates both her love and her willingness to be Cleveland-based. He asks her how on earth could any woman be happy in Cleveland? ‘Because you’re in Cleveland,’ she fires back, like the loveliest machine gun in the world. Is there anything more romantic than someone’s willingness to remain in a place that is demonstrably unsatisfactory?

In Greek myth, Icarus’s father, Daedalus, is a master craftsman whose previous credits include the Labyrinth (the pre-Bowie version).