Frances Ha shouldn't have been anywhere near as good a movie as it ultimately was: Greta Gerwig as a confused, occasionally irritating and possible demented twentysomething searching for a way to fill a hole in her life doesn't sound like the stuff of cinematic revelation, but Noah Baumbach's rather strange but surprisingly addictive little flick was one of the best films of the entire year. And it also happened to contain one of the most purely joyful scenes in all of 2013, which has Greta Gerwig running through the streets, back by David Bowie's "Modern Love." This is, of course, a playful nod to Leos Carax's French movie Bad Love, which makes sense when you consider that Frances Ha seems to have been inspired by movies of the French New Wave. Like in that movie, the song becomes a kind of anthem for its main character, who is - for all intents and purposes - both adorable and delusional, clueless and oddly enlightened. But it's not really necessary to delve too deep into what makes this such a great movie moment: as we learned in climax of Woody Allen's Manhattan, it's just fun to watch people running to music.
