Woody Allen says his latest film, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, evokes the styles of European filmmakers he admires.

los angeles times / LIZ O. BAYLEN

HOLLYWOOD — The only place Woody Allen ever really wants to be is in his bed. “My spot on the bed is my spot in the world,” he explains. It’s where he watches baseball games, and reads, and where he writes, usually in the morning, because if he starts at night, he sometimes gets so excited he can’t go to sleep. It’s where the act of imagination is actually “pleasurable and I might go cast the people and see my characters come to life,” he says. “And I put the music in and I see the characters playing their scenes to the beautiful music behind them. You know, I get a kick out of that. And if nobody else does, that’s too bad.”

He sounds less defiant than resigned. Of all the major American artists, Allen has experienced one of the cruelest and most violent whipsaws of fortune, of tumbling from audience adulation to mass approbation. His solution to the vagaries of public estimation is to hold fast to the belief that none of it means anything. “When you’re a kid you think to yourself, ‘Fame and fortune and it’s going to be so exciting and …’ — but then you quickly find after three or four films, you find, ‘Wait a minute, the upside is nothing and the downside is nothing.’ The adulation of the multitudes or of the critics is an impersonal experience, and the negative feelings (from) people is an impersonal experience. The contract that the audience has with the person is you entertain us and we’ll show up. And that is as the contract should be.”

From the way Allen is talking, one would assume it’s the eve of the release of one of his misfires, the platoon of piffles including Celebrity and Anything Else that followed the public scandal of his 1992 breakup with Mia Farrow, the ugly accusations (denied and never proved) of child abuse and his later marriage (now 10 years running) to Farrow’s adopted daughter, then-22-year-old Soon-Yi Previn. In fact, he has made one of his most charming and funny movies in more than a decade, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the tale of two American young women (Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall) who, while summering in Spain, tumble into a relationship with an attractive, woman-loving artist (Javier Bardem) and his addled but delicious ex-wife (Penelope Cruz). The film, opening today, is a distillation on the vagaries of love with each woman struggling to find a stable foothold: the sexual adventuress who’s chronically dissatisfied (Johansson), the risk-averse would-be academic who’s in danger of squelching life’s passion (Hall) and the intoxicating, anarchic spirit (Cruz), who makes art great and life hell.

On a recent weekend, Allen, 72, was holed up in a hotel room, giving interviews — a rare burden for Allen, who used to be able to escape such routine experiences.

He is frailer than expected, in a pristine blue-checked shirt and chinos. He has totally gray hair, thick black glasses and skin that is curiously unwrinkled. One gets the sense that he would be happiest if everyone just left him alone to do his work. His manner is sweet but cagey.

Allen admits that going to Barcelona, Spain, to make a movie fulfilled his fantasy to one day be a European filmmaker. “I always wanted to make the kinds of films that I saw in the 1950s. The Truffaut films and the Goddard films and the Bergmans and Fellinis, and those are the films that always influenced my work. And I’ve always copied them and been influenced by them. Vicky Cristina Barcelona looks to me, when I see it, like one of those films.

The film, full of lovely images of the Gaudi buildings and old churches, is one of the happy accidents that have come from falling out of favor in America. Almost by necessity, he has been catapulted out of his familiar New York tropes, into London and now Barcelona, and the change of scenery appears to have been rejuvenating.

When a Spanish company, Mediapro, approached him with the proposition to finance a film in Barcelona, the writer-director basically thought, “Why not?” “Barcelona is a city that I can live in very easily,” he says. “If they mentioned some city in the Ukraine or the Sudan or something, I would have said no. But Barcelona is a beautiful, wonderful city.”

Most who see his new work will luxuriate in the comedy and in the possibility of spending 90 sun-drenched minutes in Barcelona. But, he says, his Spanish fable is actually “a very sad film.” This is, after all, Woody Allen’s universe, no matter what continent it takes place on, or how many laughs are to be had. Nobody gets what he or she wants.

“A relationship is like two sets of wires that are all over the place and they all have got to connect,” says Allen. He uses his fingers to demonstrate, gently touching one hand to the other. “If one wire doesn’t connect, then it doesn’t work. It’s like there’s one thing missing. The salt is missing from the diet. It’s a small thing, but it ruins you. You die.”