Summer, Spain, sex ... Woody Allen-style

With Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz and Javier Bardem. Directed by Woody Allen. Rated PG-13 (strong language, sexual situations and alcohol abuse). At metro theaters. 1 hour, 37 minutes.

Bottom line: Woody's second-best film in a decade.

"The heart wants what it wants."

So famously —- or infamously —- said Woody Allen, after his front-page rattling affair with his then-lover's daughter. Love had no logic, Allen seemed to say (or morality, he seemed to imply). The passion was all that mattered.

Whether you accept that as simple philosophy or blind self-justification, that sense of unstoppable emotion was the subtext of his best film of the past 10 years, the "An American Tragedy" update "Match Point."

And it's the main theme of his second-best, the sexy and serious "Vicky Cristina Barcelona."

The title should really have commas —- like the people it chronicles, it's a little hurried and breathless. Because it's the story of Vicky, a sober young American about to wed her ridiculously wealthy fiance. And Cristina, a would-be artist who sees every meeting as the start to an adventure.

And Barcelona, Spain, the summer vacation that may change them both.

The real catalyst in Catalonia is Jose, a sexy Spanish painter with an even sexier (and quite mad) ex-wife. Vicky, much to her shock, falls for him. Cristina, quickly, moves in with him. And each has to puzzle out what this means, to Vicky's expectations of married stability and Cristina's fantasy of eternal change.

Allen can get pedantic —- his "Melinda & Melinda," while intriguing, was practically diagrammed —- and he sometimes grows a little fusty here. There's an omniscient narrator, who adds nothing but a slightly superior tone; the characters, even for New York grad students, sometimes speak in an arch and rather middle-age way.

Allen, however, has his best cast in years filling out the four leads. Frequent star Scarlett Johansson is perfect as Cristina —- young and effortlessly sexy (yet, when the animalistic Penelope Cruz arrives on the scene as her lover's ex, suddenly pathetically gauche and childish).

Javier Bardem, meanwhile, is perhaps the only actor who could keep his painter from turning into a cartoon of the Latin lover (cast, say, Antonio Banderas and the story lurches into farce). And Rebecca Hall —- best known, so far, for "The Prestige" —- is smart and sympathetic as the conflicted Vicky.

The lovely backdrops to this melodrama (this has been billed as a comedy, but it's really more of a bittersweet romance) never quite become the fifth character they deserve to be. Even though Vicky is supposed to be an expert in Catalan culture, there's little sense of how this region differs from the rest of Spain.

But the setting is striking. And so are the scenes of these people —- two naive Americans, one conflicted artist and a fiery force of nature —- colliding in the midst of them.

Although Allen has worked out his plot carefully, he refuses to let it get too neat —- to let his characters learn a simple, ironic lesson and move on. Both Vicky and Cristina go through a summer of soul-searching. But was it life-changing? That's unclear. Sometimes, it seems, that while the heart wants what it wants, the mind only hears what it wishes.

It's a sobering sermon —- and one even its preacher might profit by.