Woody Allen’s newest film, “Rifkin’s Festival,” is a delight. It’s light-hearted, filled with lively jazz tunes and European flavor, and proof that the 86-year-old writer-director is as good or better than he’s ever been.

I watched the film recently on-line, via Google Play

Made in 2020, the whole film has a light, European-flavored touch and feel. It follows Mort Rifkin, a New York writer and former film teacher, and his wife, Susan, a publicist, to San Sebastian, Spain, and its International Film Festival.

San Sebastian is a real city in northern Spain, near that country’s border with France, and has an international film festival.

In a nutshell, Rifkin is jealous of the handsome French actor his wife spends much of the festival with, though he compensates by finding a fetching young heart doctor named Joanna, who has marriage problems of her own.

Of course, the plot is just a taste of what this movie-meal is about.

Is Rifkin the Allen character here? Yea, maybe. In the capable hands of actor Wallace Shawn, Rifkin is the guiding presence that holds the film together.

Across the board, most of the acting here is first-rate.

Shot in Sony Digital, the film is filled with gorgeous, colorful visuals, thanks to the European setting and the expert eyes of its Oscar-winning cinematographer, Vittorio Storaro.

As in many of Allen’s films, the work is a mixture of comedy and drama, with satirical jabs about characters and culture alongside questions about the meaning of life.

Apropos for a film set at a film festival, the movie is filled with Allen’s reflections on cinema. His memories of movies are often comic and dream-based. For example, early in “Rifkin’s Festival,” there’s a sequence based on the famous “Rosebud” scene from “Citizen Kane,” except here the reference is to a woman Rifkin knew in his youth, Rose Budnick.

There are the usual Allen set pieces on display. There’s the New Yorker sensibility, even though here the action is set in the rolling hills of sunny Spain. There’s the pondering over the larger questions of existence, including life and death, and what does it all mean? There’s the reverence for the classics of literature and film, and the appreciation of romance, and women.

Allen is returning in “Rifkin’s Festival” to the themes and ideas he’s been perusing on-screen for decades. But as the director’s career has largely shifted to Europe in recent years, this film deals with those Allen themes with a European, lighter touch. Along with his ace Italian cinematographer, many of the actors are European, as well as the crew members.

Along with the southern European light and sun, if feels like there’s less guilt in this film, and more, dare I say, joie de vivre.

The French guitarist Stephane Wrembel is credited with providing the music for the film. From start to finish, light jazz permeates “Rifkin’s Festival,” giving the movie a jaunty, playful feel.

In addition, there’s light, beautiful female jazz vocals sprinkled throughout the film: a delightful addition.

Make no mistake, of course. Allen’s limitations as a filmmaker are on display here, too. The action often seems vaguely formalized, like we’ve happened upon a play in progress, rather than real life. And the general sense is that we’ve entered the world of the rich, with gorgeous interiors, straight out of a design magazine, and characters who don’t seem to even think about money, at all.

But…nevertheless, there are those of us who overlook Allen’s limitations, and enjoy his considerable talents.

Woody Allen’s latest, “Rifkin’s Festival,” is one of his best.