Jenni Ajderian

Dear Hallmark : We're all very impressed by what you've done with St Valentine's day. No, really- the appropriation of the death-date of a Roman heretic who went ahead and practiced illegal marriage ceremonies and its transformation into one of the biggest gift-giving events of the year ? Seriously, bravo. Aside from the chocolates, the cards, the squishy teddy bears and the extortionate romantic holidays, you've also spawned an entirely new way to feel bad about oneself, a season around which Hollywood can organise its mushiest films, and an anti-movement just as strong as its lovey-dovey counterpart. So why did you stop there ? No sir I ain't fakin' / When I say I don't eat bacon There are plenty of other Saints in the Roman Catholic calendar just begging to be used for money-making ends, and a lot of them are better documented than St Valentine. These lesser-known saints come prepared with their own celebration day, traditions and a pre-defi...

           A recent article in the Guardian's Student section offers a veritable cornucopia of advice on how to water down a social networking profile in order to score in the job market. But if we're talking about a candidate's Facebook, and Googlability, we need to look at what else is out there. Issues of privacy and the multiple personalities of an internet-user make this kind of character research nigh on impossible and, ultimately, useless.      The original article, written by 'digital expert' Bernadette John, presents a pretty naive view of what employers want. We are told to 'play nicely, and never talk negatively about anyone online', and to 'never use social media when you are angry, tired, drunk or under the influence of anything else.' By all means I agree that you shouldn't use social media as a platform from which to hurl abuse at your ex or announce all the illegal substances in which you've partaken, b ut it's not a ca...

(originally published by EdinburghExchanges blog)           Freshly-rested and a little over-stuffed after Christmas, we're all back in Aix to knuckle down and try to pass an exam or two. I'm sure I'll get round to writing about them soon, when I'm not actually doing them, and when my hesitant daily excursions into the outside world stop providing me with such interesting things to see.      One of I'm sure many unannounced public art installations, Joséph Donten's simply-named 'Arbres Cours Mirabeau' certainly brightens up the street now the twinkly lights of Noël are gone. It's as if the trees have become incredibly tall, incredibly chic French fashionistas declaring that Polkadot is, very much, in. Though with my anglo-eyes I can't help being reminded of Pudsey Bear.      With January comes sales, and if you add to that a love of Franglais and sensationalism in shop-fronts, you get something like this. A phenomeno...

(originally published by EdinburghExchanges  blog)      Monaco is a city built on pure money that became a principality thanks to tourism, and which over the years has bred the richest, most densely-packed population in the world. It is kind of ironic, I think, that we got to go there for free.      Our oft-neglectful Student Housing association threw the free bus tour of the teeny weeny country at the end of term, deciding that a bunch of students would love to see the Old Town of the world's smallest country, as well as a stuffy perfumery on the way home. From start to finish we were complaining that they were treating us like children. We trailed a couple of tourguides up to the changing of the guards, round a cathedral and up to Prince Albert's Nautical Museum, all of us grumbling all the way round until we saw the fish.           We liked the fish.      It was at about this point that we took off ou...

     Buddy-Comedy-Road-Movie-with-added-cathartic-death is perhaps an underpopulated genre of film. Between drunken stumblings and snap decisions to drive to Corsica, your three lead males from different corners of life have to calm down every now and then just enough to remember your lead female, tragically deceased. Don't worry, this isn't a spoiler- you'll find out as much from AlloCine 's page on the film. Point is, you might not get much more from the film itself.      Bitter and sweet are put very, very close together in this coming-of-age-slash-putting-feet-on-the-ground tale  of three friends united by their love, platonic or not, of Charlie (Mélanie Thierry), the vibrant sister-mother-lover of every Frenchman's dreams, with whose funeral the film opens. So our three musketeers Elie, Boris and Maxime (Nicolas Duvauchelle, François-Xavier Demaison, Pierre Niney) then decide to leap into a car and take the holiday they'd always planned with th...

Sur le pont d'Avignon, on y chante on y danse...      But only if you pay to. The bridge stretches only about a fifth of the length it used to, not even reaching the island-peninsula in the middle of the river Rhône which used to house gambling dens and all kinds of sinful endeavours. According to my ever-trusty guidebook, the original song was " Sous le pont d'Avignon "- not on, but under , describing the impatient dance of those awaiting tourists with light heads and heavy pockets.      Not quite so heavy-pocketed, we got into Avignon on one of the windiest days I've experienced in France. Our guide explained that here we're out of the shelter offered to Aix by the nearby mountains, so there will of course be more wind than we're used to (actually, because of his accent, I at first thought he said that Aix was protected from wine ( le vin ) as opposed to wind ( le vent )).      The bridge is an impressive affair, even in its slightl...

     In the 50s, having a job as a secretary may have been considered modern, or even empowering, but mostly, as Rose Pamphyle (Déborah Francois) says in her job interview, it's the chance to work for an important man. Seen in this light, the rise and fall of a Speed-Typing champion is just as much to do with a woman's personal victory as it is to do with her boss' encouragement and coaching, as well as the freedom he allows her to have.      In the film, and in life, the Speed-Typing Championship probably stemmed from a cigar-fuelled "I bet my secretary types faster than yours" argument, and the exclusively female competitors inhabit a space somewhere between real sportsman(woman?)ship and simply being allowed to play. The rocky ground of post-war sexual power-play is tested with bright colours and the happy clack-clack of a typewriter, and leads us somewhere a little more patronising than first-time director Regis Roinsard may have been hoping for. ...