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"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" continues Woody Allen's recent cinematic tour of Europe with another morality play, one that doesn't fit his "romantic comedy" or "melodramatic thriller" mold. But "Barcelona" is likable, beautifully acted, scenic and sexy, ingredients that have been missing from his films since, oh, "Everyone Says I Love You" (1996).

Allen uses one of Europe's most passionate cities as his crucible for a chatty essay on passion and love and the difference between them. Yeah, he's been there before - the subject, not the city. But at least the novel setting allows him to do what he's done before in novel ways.

Vicky (Rebecca Hall), a sensible American engaged to be married, is pals with Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), an impulsive sensualist. They spend a summer in Spain, where Vicky will finish up graduate work in Catalan art and culture, and on Antoni Gaudi, the architect famed for his playful, sensual undulating lines. Cristina, a failed would-be filmmaker, is just there for the experience and maybe a little romantic and artistic self-discovery.

They meet a too-sexy artist, Juan (Javier Bardem), whose approach to them says "player," but whose candor defuses that. He wants them to come with him to Oviedo, spend a weekend, see the sights, and sleep with him.

"Why not? Life is short. Life is dull. Life is full of pain. Why not do something special?"

Vicky is outraged. Cristina is intrigued. And when they make that trip, not under Juan's conditions, they become caught up in the passion, the drama of his love life. He is divorced from a woman so passionate that she "stuck a knife in my chest."

Separately, in quite roundabout ways, the women become members of love triangles involving Juan. We meet the ex, and Penelope Cruz and the Oscar-winning Bardem set off the sort of sparks you'd expect from Spain's greatest screen couple. We also pick up Allen's message, about following your passions, acting on impulse, or accepting that you shouldn't.

It's a movie filled with Allen-isms, the odd way so many of his actors start to sound and act like him when performing his lines, the highbrow poseur's name-dropping (Scriabin, Gaudi, Miro). He makes wonderful use of this stunning city - the churches; the famed boulevard Las Ramblas; the antique, mountain-top Tibidabo amusement park; the Park Guell and Sagrada Familia; and other famous structures by Gaudi.

One very annoying thing about this movie is that much of the information - back story, advances in the plot - is conveyed by a never-seen narrator. Writerly, yes. But boring. Even a film as frankly sexual as this one can seem a little fusty and verbose in Allen's hands.

It's odd, too, how Allen seems instinctively to hire actors who are already playing some version of himself. Chris Messina was Allen-lite in "Ira & Abby." Here, he's the stammering, somewhat dull Doug, Vicky's fiance, a man who promises her a life Juan never could deliver. And that's the problem.

At this stage of the game, nobody goes to Woody Allen movies to be surprised. But every now and then he manages one. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is its own triangle, a movie from a director who's done mostly comedies and neo-thrillers but that is neither, simply an old man's mulling over love and passion and whether he or his characters make the right choice.