First Night: Vicky Cristina Barcelona, London Film Festival

So all Woody Allen needed was some Spanish sun to show he is still capable of producing an amusing comedy centred on the conundrums of those unlucky, or incapable, in love. Even his bet that Scarlett Johansson would turn out to be a modern Mia Farrow or Diane Keaton, which seemed laughable to anyone who saw his disastrous recent trio of London-set films, finally pays some sort of dividend.

In her fourth outing for the New Yorker, Johansson plays Cristina, a frustrated American short-film director who perpetually chooses exciting but ill-suited boyfriends. She is the film's narrative voice, informing us that her best friend Vicky (Rebecca Hall), an academic with whom she has travelled to the Catalan City, is about to marry a financially stable bore. The girls are looking for some art, culture and sangria before they are forced to make serious decisions on careers and boyfriends.

Fears that Allen would trot out a series of clichés on Spain, as he did in England are borne out, as a Gaudi-heavy quick tourist guide to the city is delivered, in which dodgy hell-holes such as Las Ramblas are conveniently brushed-over.

But while the talk of Miro and Gaudi is tedious, Allen has his own masterstroke: the abstract artist Juan Antonio, portrayed by the excellent Javier Bardem. He has just gone through a rough divorce in which it is rumoured that his wife tried to kill him, or herself. In a scene better than anything Allen has created since 1994's Bullets Over Broadway, the recently divorced artist approaches the girls in a restaurant and suggestively asks the pair to take his private jet to his country manor where he promises that there will be a lot of love-making. The bluntness of this delivery is an offer that the impulsive Cristina cannot refuse, while Vicky counsels caution before agreeing to tag along as a chaperone.

At the house, we are treated to Allen in his element as the cad Antonio tries his utmost to show both girls a good time, leading Vicky into a moral quandary. This is the Allen of Hannah and Her Sisters, toying with slightly neurotic characters and questioning their motives and emotional integrity with each line. Then Antonio's ex-wife Maria Elena (Penelope Cruz) appears and the tangled triangle becomes a serendipitous square. The years spent being the muse of Pedro Almodovar have made the actress adept at playing unstable women. She is a real match for Bardem and watching the pair tango around each other is a frothy delight.

Cristina thinks it rather European to have three in a relationship and Allen revels in Johansson and Cruz sharing a passionate kiss. What sounds like an erotic male fantasy is in fact just another moment of harmless fun played for laughs. Indeed, the frivolous, punchy tone lacks sufficient emotional resonance to be anything more than a mid-level Allen work, but that still means it is much better than most romcoms.