Book, Film Tie-In Whetting Appetites for ‘Chocolate’ : Movie: Doubleday and Miramax join forces in a piggyback promotion of Laura Esquivel’s Mexican novel and the film.

Miramax Films and Doubleday publishing house are celebrating each others’ successes with “Like Water for Chocolate”--the hardcover novel and the movie.

There’s an unmistakable link between the popularity of the film and Laura Esquivel’s Mexican novel upon which it is based. Two months after the film opened in February, the English translation of the novel crossed into the Top 10 of the Los Angeles Times and New York Times hardcover bestseller lists, as well as some regional papers’ bestseller lists. It’s now in its 15th hardcover printing, with 182,000 copies in print. Doubleday claims another first: The book is a San Francisco Chronicle Top 10 bestseller in both English and Spanish editions.

The movie, produced and directed by Esquivel’s husband, Alfonso Arau, has sold $6.1 million in tickets to date--the most ever for a Latin American film released in North America, according to Variety. The Spanish-language movie has English subtitles.

“We believe the book and the movie bring one person to the other,” said Ellen Archer, a spokeswoman for Doubleday in Manhattan. But unlike other movie-book tie-ins, Doubleday claims this is the first time a hardcover book has been tied into a current movie.

“(Miramax’s) audience is an audience that reads and frequents art-house films,” said Gerry Rich, senior vice president of Miramax, distributors of the independently produced feature.

Arau sees it all so much more simply: “It’s magic.”

Set in 1910 against the backdrop of the Mexican revolution, “Chocolate” tells the story of the youngest of three sisters, Tita, who must forsake marriage in order to care for her authoritarian mother. Her boyfriend, Pedro, prevented from marrying her, marries one of her elder sisters instead, just so he can be near his first love.

Relegated mostly to kitchen duty, Tita creates extraordinary dishes that reflect her emotions. On one occasion, she infuses her sister’s wedding cake with so many of her own tears that the eating of it later by wedding guests has a domino effect: They all take sick, each mourning their own lost loves. Each chapter of the novel begins with a recipe: turkey mole with almonds and sesame seeds, for example, or quail with rose petal sauce.

Other factors have contributed in tantalizing the public’s taste buds for “Chocolate”: a cross-over audience/readership of English- and Spanish-speakers, cross-promotion (the film is flagged on the book jacket, the book is trumpeted on the movie poster) and a plain old-fashioned publicity tour.

As it was Esquivel’s first novel and she was relatively unknown outside Mexico (as opposed to her husband, a character actor in 30 American pictures, including “Romancing the Stone”), reviews of the book, though enthusiastic, were not featured prominently.

But when the movie opened, the critics gushed. “If a movie looked good enough to eat, it’s ‘Like Water for Chocolate,’ ” said The Times’ Michael Wilmington. The New York Times’ Janet Maslin said the film “relies so enchantingly upon fate, magic and a taste for the supernatural that it suggests Gabriel Garcia Marquez in a cookbook-writing mode . . . prepare for a treat.”

Mix mouth-watering reviews and good word of mouth and Miramax’s Rich believes it has “tremendous legs”--movie parlance for a long life in the theaters.

The book “does lend itself to wonderful marketing,” said Archer of Doubleday. Esquivel has been interviewed in restaurants around the country, and Doubleday did a Mother’s Day promotion at the Barnes and Noble bookstore chain in Manhattan where a box of Perugina chocolates was given with each book sale.

Esquivel and Arau are currently back in Los Angeles to do satellite television interviews for overseas broadcasters, in between entertaining another pitch for their services from movie producers Arau declines to name.

“Everybody in (the) business and the world dreams of making a Hollywood film,” Arau said.

Many others probably wish they had made “Like Water for Chocolate.” Arau says few people can resist its ingredients: “There will always be love and food, those are the two elements of life.”