Ayoade on Top

by Richard Ayoade

In a masterstroke of mise en scène, Barreto places Ted in the doorway. On his right, screen left, Donna’s poster of the Arc de Triomphe; on his left, screen right, another revelatory piece of art direction: a clock whose face looks like the front of a plane – two propeller-bearing wings jut from the circular front; two wheels angle out below. The staging renders Ted as the unwitting barrier between Donna ‘in flight’ (as represented by the novelty clock) and her destination: ‘Paris, First-Class International’ (as represented by the Arc de Triomphe). He’s also kind of blocking the door, which is annoying.

Donna’s proposition: 1. Being with Ted = feeling of being home. 2. Home = place of discomfort. 3. Therefore, Ted = uncomfortable feeling?

I must have thought that one day, someone would approach me and say, ‘Love the Holden Caulfield reference. How would you feel about becoming soulmates in a way that doesn’t entail any actual emotional responsibility on your part?’

‘What is the real Sally Weston like?’ we wonder. Is Donna wise to follow in her trailblazing jet stream? Does she have feet of clay beneath her anti-deep-vein-thrombosis support socks?

At a party in Brooklyn, she sees her friend enjoying family life. Why isn’t she enjoying family life? While on a Christmas Eve flight, Donna sees a newspaper clipping showing a picture of Ted Stewart. He has been hired by a local law firm.* Why hasn’t she been hired by a local law firm? Or failing that, why isn’t she holding the non-newspaper-clipping version of Ted, i.e. Ted himself (the actual Ted)? When she lands in Paris on Christmas Eve, she sees couples strolling arm in arm. Why isn’t she strolling arm in arm (with another person)? She sees further happy families. Why has there been no further development w/r/t her question outlined in point 1? She sees a couple aggressively necking in the street, but she’s too mournful to enjoy watching them. Why isn’t anyone forcefully exploring her mouth? She walks alone, merely looking elegant, ignored by everyone. Apart from the fact that the director told them to, why is everyone ignoring her? She stares at a roaring fire, but she is not at hearth and home; the roaring fire is an image on a television in a sterile hotel room and lacks the directional, frontal heat she craves. She clutches the jumper that Ted’s family gave her, but which she still won’t wear on account of it being too shapeless. Why isn’t she in front of a non-meta heat source?

Christmas in Paris should be a dream. But, the film courageously asserts, dreams are not reality. We can’t live in dreams any more that we can live in the clouds or under socialism. At some stage, you have to touch down. Although not explicitly Judaeo-Christian in emphasis, the film can’t help but evoke Mark 8:36: ‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?’ Bit of a leading question, but you catch JC’s drift.

We all know the path to success requires that dead wood be burnt. And by dead wood, I mean living people. Only when you’ve established your dominion can you reward yourself with romance. You cannot dedicate yourself to self-advancement when you’re in a relationship: how can you help yourself and another person at the same time? It’s impossible. 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.

With the boldness only low BMI can bring, she opens the door (technically trespass) to find … Ted’s grandmother. Donna confides in her. She confesses that she messed up … She thought Paris, First-Class International would make her happy … but it didn’t. Ted makes her happy. In short, she bloody loves Ted. She tries to cry for a short while, but nothing comes. Then, a thought that triggers a rueful smile: ‘You haven’t heard a single word I’ve said, have you?’ The deft seeding of this ancient woman’s near-deafness pays the kind of dramatic dividends for which Arthur Miller would have killed.

How apposite that Donna should meet Ted on the stairs, a place of transition! Ted is neither ‘on ground level’ nor ‘in the stratosphere’, he is ‘on the stairs’. In this moment he represents a third way. A life that can balance career and family. A synthesis. 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?

To get to the bottom of me, you have to get to the bottom of Top. Two bottoms, same shit.

When I pitched the idea for this book, my nameless publisher Walter started to cry. And not just because he was tired. It was also because he was sad. It felt like he kept using the word ‘betrayal’, but I couldn’t be sure because I was scrolling through my mental Rolodex of other publishers who might be interested in the book and who didn’t look so goddam mournful about its ‘non-existent commercial potential’.

‘I’m gonna write a monograph on View from the Top, see? And I’m going to interweave my response to this little-seen gem with moments and memories from my life. And there ain’t nuttin’ you or any of you dirty heels at Faber can do, see? Cos I ain’t doing some picture book called Cats Who Love Without Boundaries or whatever the hell else is de rigueur with you douchebags down in Soho Town. I’m writing a book for me, you rat. You hear me? This is for me, you low-down louse. Ya hear? For me, Ma, ME!!!’