2003 was a clustered year at the box office. Vying alongside the soon-to-be seminal Kangaroo Jack, Bruce Almighty and How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, were the comedies Just Married, Dickie Roberts: Former Child Star, and Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle. More intellectually challenging fare, like Bad Boys II, Jeepers Creepers 2 and Scary Movie 3, duked it out with future classics Freddy vs Jason and The Matrix Reloaded, while pastoral works like The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl crushed it both commercially and financially.

Perhaps it was the sheer quality of 2003's output that meant a smaller film like Bruno Barreto's View from the Top (budgeted at a mere $30 million) struggled to make its mark. It was too subtle, too provocative, too counter-cultural for its time. Here was a film that dared a pre-Trump America to believe in itself again, with its exhortation to work like hell, play like hell and take responsibility like hell when it wasn't really your fault. This was an unashamedly cerebral film starring that icon of third wave feminism, Gwyneth Paltrow, in an English-language dramedy that charts the highs and lows of Donna Jensen, a Small-Town Girl from the Wrong Side of the Tracks, as she pursues her dream of becoming an air stewardess. Here was a protest against the narrative of victimhood that has come to pervade today's Complaint Culture. If you want to succeed, the film bravely asserts, put on a short skirt and go into the service industry! Because if you're hot, you'll reach the top! And if you're a little heavy or have a squinty eye, maybe you can work behind the scenes where you won't spook anyone.

From Ayoade on Top by Richard Ayoade © 2019. Published by Faber & Faber Publishing.