Two girlfriends on a summer holiday in Spain become enamored with the same painter, unaware that his ex-wife, with whom he has a tempestuous relationship, is about to re-enter the picture.

Woody Allen’s latest comedy is a subtle spoof on the Don Juan myth and the funniest of the four films that he has assembled in Europe. You don’t have to see the joke to enjoy it, but it helps to explain the strange, operatic tone as two chalk-and-cheese beauties fall in love with an impossibly sexy libertine within seconds of arriving in Spain.

A droll voiceover – Christopher Evan Welch, who plays no direct part in the film, but keeps us at thinking distance – paints the first scene of this shameless fantasy. The prudish Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and her saucy best friend, Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), arrive in Barcelona for two summer months of galleries and sights. Vicky is compiling her postgraduate thesis on Catalan culture before returning home to marry a ghastly square called Doug (Chris Messina).

Cristina, an impulsive, busty blonde, is basically here for the ride. Her prayers are answered when a local artist and serial charmer, Juan Antonio, whisks the girls to his rural family retreat – by private plane – for an intimate weekend of fine wine and conversation. Cristina falls instantly under his spell; and, against every expensive Waspy nerve in her body, so does the grudging Vicky.

Javier Bardem is almost embarrassingly perfect as the guileless seducer who can effortlessly tune in to every secret female anxiety and desire without stealing an ounce of a woman’s dignity. His paint-spattered T-shirts and love of rustic pleasures – his father is something of an old goat too – play jealous havoc with Vicky and Cristina. His dark bedroom eyes and melodic memories of love and heartbreak are acted out against the most scrumptious countryside and city architecture. Sometimes you’re not quite sure whom to sleep with: the cast or the scenery.

Yes, we are a million miles from reality, but a mere six inches from Woody’s eternal obsession with sexual honesty: how it liberates and how it causes the most awful personal damage. In this respect Vicky Cristina Barcelona is much more adult than the operatic plot. The ménage à trois – which painfully pulls the girls apart – becomes a full-blown loony aria when Juan’s ex-wife, MarÍa (Penélope Cruz), suddenly turns up threatening to kill herself if Juan refuses to take her back. The blizzard of bitchy lines, subtitled in English and screamed in Catalan, about the sleeping arrangements is terrific.

It goes without saying that Juan Antonio and MarÍa are still madly in love, despite the knife attacks. What’s unexpected is that MarÍa is arguably more a force of nature than her exhusband. The actress is a sultry, sizzling joy as an utterly ungovernable Catalan firebrand, full of quicksilver anger and tenderness. Frankly, it would be hard to invent four more compelling star-crossed lovers.

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