Woody Allen has his groove back

THE THEME isn't new. A character, often American or British, goes to an exotic locale where he or she finds new excitement and renewed purpose in life. Hence the title "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" where Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) not only find romance with the same sensual Spaniard (Javier Bardem), but an entirely different, less-than-monogamous way of looking at life and love.

And all one can say is "Viva Barcelona" - not only for breathing new life into the two women, but for breathing new life into the filmmaker, Woody Allen.

Allen, as we know too well, is no stranger to less-than-monogamous relationships, having left Mia Farrow for her adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn in 1992. But he has become a stranger to good filmmaking. After 1999's soulful "Sweet and Lowdown," Allen turned out five American films, of which the kindest thing one could say was that he was spinning his wheels. He then made three films set in England that were as dreary as the British rain. Two of them superficially resembled Patricia Highsmith's edgier novels like "The Talented Mr. Ripley," but with none of that writer's panache.

Like many Allen fans, and not for the first time, I had left the director for dead.

Which makes it all the more thrilling, and humbling, to see him get his groove back in this new film that, like "Annie Hall" and some of his best relationship movies, finds no magic formula for how to conduct one's self romantically, and like "Crimes and Misdemeanors" and his more provocative films, explores a universe more complex than any current Hollywood film, including "The Dark Knight."

Allen is hardly the first American artist to lose it and then get it back. Bob Dylan sank twice, only to resurface with "Blood on the Tracks" and "Time Out of Mind" at different times in his career. Edward Albee was a forgotten man for a decade before 1994's "Three Tall Women" and later plays restored him to the pinnacle of the playwriting world. Even Alfred Hitchcock had been written off, only to return stronger than ever in 1951 with "Strangers on a Train" and subsequent masterpieces. One hopes the same will be true for Roman Polanski, who stormed back to life with "The Pianist."

Some artists, like Dylan, admit to fallow periods. Others, like Albee, blame the critics for not getting their work. Maybe Albee is right, and all those neglected works by all the aforementioned artists deserve a second look.

Whatever the case, the point is that an artist's renewed strength refreshes the audience's spirit as well, reminding us that as we get older we don't have to succumb to the tyranny of the middle, whether it's the middle of the road, middle-class morality, or middlebrow art.

Not that "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" is highbrow. But what has plagued Allen's movies are, to borrow one of his titles, their Hollywood endings, their determination to wrap things up too neatly. Good triumphs in the American films and even when we might get away with murder, as in the British-set "Match Point," our conscience destroys us, all of which is something of a refutation of "Crimes and Misdemeanors," his best film.

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona" breathes fresher artistic air, as if the Spanish spirit of Picasso and Almodovar bolstered Allen's determination to stand firm against American Puritanism and to explore the ways of the heart outside the Hollywood box, much as "Big Love" does on HBO.

The movie can certainly be seen as the filmmaker's defense of his own difficulties with monogamous commitment. "The heart wants what it wants," he said when the Farrow scandal broke, sounding simultaneously cruel and selfish. "Vicky Cristina Barcelona" says "The heart wants what it wants, but life is more complicated than that." And with all the tsk-tsking about the out-of-wedlock experiences in the Edwards and Palin clans, it comes not a moment too soon.

"Vicky Cristina Barcelona," like "Crimes and Misdemeanors," is a lighthearted look at the dark side of American morality - in this case our collective Puritanism. It's Allen at his playful, artful best and it's a pleasure to share in the fun. Viva "Vicky." Viva Woody.

Freelance writer Ed Siegel is former theater and television critic for the Globe.