The women, the city and a twist

You should hate these people, really, these smug American yuppies chatting gaily about golf, tennis and boating over red wine on a sun-splashed Spanish afternoon.

You're also free to abhor the painters, poets and musicians who populate Barcelona and spend their bohemian days idly debating the merits of love and art -- when they are not wrapped up in making both of them, that is.

Somehow, Woody Allen makes us not just tolerate them but find ourselves engaged in their adventures in "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," his strongest film in quite a while. He seems freer here, more comfortable in his rhythm and less anxious to prove himself in a foreign land.

It's a romantic comedy, yes, in the writer-director's great tradition of absurdity and longing. It is an easy European romp, though it is surely superior to Allen's recent trilogy of London-based movies, "Match Point," "Scoop" and "Cassandra's Dream." But it is also tinged with melancholy, letting us know Allen is not just mocking his characters but feeling a certain amount of sympathy for them in their confusion, which inevitably evokes a similar response from his audience.

What is fascinating is the juxtaposition he has created here: In obviously stilted, overly literary tones, his narrator describes his characters' every action and emotion, and yet they themselves consistently act in impulsive, contradictory ways. These are civilized people, behaving badly but played straight by the actors, and that is the chief source of laughs.

Rebecca Hall and Scarlett Johansson, Allen's recent muse, co-star as best friends who couldn't be more different in terms of their deeds and dreams. Vicky (Hall) is a practical and structured student pursuing her master's degree in Catalan culture, and she is engaged to marry the very proper, dull businessman Doug (Chris Messina). Cristina (Johansson), meanwhile, is a restless and passionate aspiring photographer who is fresh from a disastrous attempt at making a short film and yet another tumultuous breakup. She has no idea what she wants; she only knows what she doesn't want.

But both bright young women respond in surprising ways to sexy artist Juan Antonio (an irresistible Javier Bardem), a stranger who invites them to spend the weekend with him. How things begin with him, though, are not necessarily how they end, which is where much of the fun of "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" lies.

And that is a terrible title, by the way. It's not even reflective of what the movie's about, but maybe that's part of the point: yet another intriguing bait-and-switch.

Because then Penelope Cruz enters the picture, a force of nature as Juan Antonio's tempestuous ex-wife, Maria Elena. She's fiery, funny, gorgeous and impossible to stop watching -- a genius painter and pianist, if she does say so herself, albeit one who has just tried to kill herself when we first meet her. It may be the best work of Cruz's hit-and-miss career, rivaling her Academy Award-nominated performance in "Volver" a couple of years ago.

Hall, meanwhile, serves as Allen's mouthpiece. The statuesque British stage actress is all sarcasm and witty one-liners, with a smart, dignified presence reminiscent of Gwyneth Paltrow. Johansson will get all the attention, of course: Those lips! Those eyes! That platinum-blond mess of hair! But "Barcelona" wouldn't be the same without Vicky or Cristina. Or Juan Antonio. And certainly not Maria Elena.