Given irresistible elements of romantic fable and riotous buffoonery, "Jitney" is fraught with uneasy transitions.

The playwright, a Venetian who was born in 1720 and died in 1806, spun romantic fables for the fancy of audiences and composers of opera.

The final story, 1933's "The Gilded Six-Bits," is a romantic fable of a marriage scarred by an innocent act of betrayal.

Though the film version carried one aloft, making good on the promise of romantic fable, the play, more episodic and less developed, does not.

Finally, there is the Dutch film "Egg" (1988), a "fresh and engaging" romantic fable, wrote Janet Maslin.

Using a narrator and sparse dialogue, it tries to force together two separate tales into a coherent romantic fable.

And no, Mr. Horovitz is not weaving the romantic fable one expected.

"My Grandmother's Stories" is a well-balanced offering of whimsical, romantic and tragic fables, with a pleasantly surprising complexity and resonance.

Zak Berkman's romantic fable follows a man falling in love with a budding star of right-wing radio (2:10).

"Sea and Sunset" is a romantic fable.