Woody Allen went through his Ingmar Bergman period in his younger years. Now he seems to be going through a Francois Truffaut-Louis Malle period.

Though set in Spain, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” aspires to be the kind of sophisticated movie about erotic entanglements that the French masters did so well. It’s another stop on Allen’s vacation from New York.

The movie’s set in sunny Spain and it features an intriguing cast of good-looking people, so it’s easy enough on the eyes. It also features Allen’s typically wordy script. What it lacks is Allen’s trenchant self-analysis. He was funniest when he was on screen obsessing about his own neuroses and poor life skills.

Some of the characters here may be projections of himself but if they are, they lack the kind of self-deprecation that put the entertainment in such movies as “Annie Hall.”

The story focuses on the summer vacation of two American women. Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson) are in Barcelona for a couple of months.

Vicky is studying for a master’s degree in Catalan culture and she’s engaged to a buttoned-down Wall Street guy. She seeks stability and predictability and it looks like she’ll get both in her husband-to-be.

Cristina is a free spirit and would-be artist only she can’t find her medium. She believes that love requires emotional pain and she hasn’t been shy about testing the waters. We know all this because an omniscient narrator tells us so. Otherwise, we would never know Cristina yearns for an artist’s tortured soul and a romantic adventurer’s resume.

Despite the character’s supposed restlessness and yearnings, Johansson comes off like a sorority sister who would take her T-shirt off for “Girls Gone Wild” at the drop of a Jagermeister shooter. Hall is much more believable and her warring emotions more interesting.

The two friends are having dinner when they’re approached by Juan Antonio, a painter played by Javier Bardem.

He’s an artist with an abundance of self-confidence who has a pick-up line that would result in a face full of tapas for most of us. Life is short, he tells the women. So come with him for the weekend and he will take both of them to bed.

Vicky’s indignant; Cristina is interested. So off they go and guess who is first to succumb to his charms.

Ultimately, though, the easily pliable Cristina moves in with Juan Antonio and another player enters the picture and thank goodness for that.

Penelope Cruz brings some fire to the proceedings as Juan Antonio’s unhinged ex-wife Maria Elena. She once stabbed him, but out of duty and love, Juan Antonio brings her home for a suicide watch. Maria Elena also brings a threesome into the picture.

Passion in its elusive and mysterious forms is Allen’s theme but the movie is unaccountably lacking in passion. You would think that a movie so preoccupied with sex would have more heat. Instead, it’s a pretty soap opera about the reeling appetites of self-absorbed people.

Put the story in director Adrian Lyne’s hands and critics would cry trash. But Lyne (“Unfaithful”) would do all these rampaging libidos justice.

Instead, Allen defers to a prudish side of his nature. What we get is mostly self-indulgent talk and little action. Woody, if you’re going to talk the talk, then walk the walk.