‘Chocolate’s’ Success: A Sweet Era for Imports? : Movies: Foreign films are a tough sale in the United States, where subtitles and dubbing are unpopular. But there are more art houses and multiplexes now, reflecting more demand.

“Like Water for Chocolate” (“Como Agua Para Chocolate”), the slice of Mexican magic realism that last May broke the North American box-office record for a Latin American film, is poised to reach another milestone. In fact, it may already be the highest-grossing foreign-language movie ever to play in this country.

The success of “Chocolate” is especially noteworthy, given the realities of today’s marketplace. While the audience for so-called specialized films is growing overall--perhaps because the population is aging--competition for those moviegoers is also on the rise. Foreign-language films often have a tough time fighting for attention amid ever-more-popular English-language imports.

For “Chocolate,” the film to beat at the box office is supposedly “I Am Curious Yellow,” a controversial 1967 soft-porn black-and-white Swedish import, which grossed about $19 million in the United States, according to Lawrence Cohn, a former Variety box office analyst and chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Current Variety research puts the “Curious” gross at $20.2 million, however, so Miramax Films, the distributor of “Chocolate,” is delaying an official announcement until the higher sum is reached.

As of last weekend, “Like Water for Chocolate” had sold $19.2 million worth of tickets--a huge sum in a market in which $2-million grosses are considered healthy. Over the years, only a handful of subtitled films have approached grosses like that; the most recent, Miramax’s 1990 art-house hit “Cinema Paradiso,” took in $12 million.

Cohn, however, points out that Federico Fellini’s $18-million-grossing “La Dolce Vita” (1961) was seen by 22.7 million people at 1960s ticket prices. “Chocolate,” on the other hand, has drawn about 4 million moviegoers.

Based on a book by Laura Esquivel that was one of Mexico’s all-time best-sellers, “Like Water for Chocolate” succeeded because its appeal was not limited to art-house audiences, Miramax executives noted. The film, the story of a young woman forced to forgo marriage to the man she loves in order to take care of her mother, has attracted slightly more women than men, primarily ages 25 or older.

The film was launched in February as an art-house offering, but by Memorial Day Miramax had expanded the run to an unusually large 180 theaters, according to Harvey Weinstein, the company’s co-founder. “When we saw we were playing against ‘Hot Shots Part Deux’ and ‘Cliffhanger,’ we realized that the adult audience was being disenfranchised,” he said. “We seized the moment.”

Made for $2 million in government loans and directed by Esquivel’s husband, Alfonso Arau, the movie’s audience initially split between an art-house crowd and a Spanish-speaking audience. But the balance shifted to 80:20 as the film went wider and the book became a bestseller in this country, Weinstein said.

As the success of “Chocolate” demonstrates, it is still possible for a foreign-language film to draw sizable American audiences. But while the market for specialized film is growing--so much so that major studios are producing movies like “The Age of Innocence”--the mix has changed considerably since the 1960s and ‘70s, when going to an art house meant seeing work by such international masters as Fellini, Truffaut or Bergman.

These days, with only a few exceptions, most leading imports are from English-speaking countries--such as Britain’s “The Crying Game” ($65 million) and “Howards End” ($25 million).

Foreign films thrived in the 1950s and ‘60s in part because “they were the only form of entertainment that had sexuality,” Cohn said. Not long after the release of “Curious Yellow,” which unleashed a legal battle on obscenity that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, American-made films became more explicit, and a number of art houses converted to porno theaters.

These days, only a few major distributors handle foreign-language films, which are considered a poor risk, especially since they have limited potential in the ancillary television and video markets. Thomas F. Garvin, a producer’s representative whose movies include the recent Chinese comedy, “The Story of Qui Ju” ($1.5 million), estimates that it costs a minimum of $250,000 to “open” a specialized film. Others put the figure much higher.

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At the same time, the advent of art houses in such cities as Montgomery, Ala., and Fargo, N.D., has made foreign imports more accessible to audiences than ever before, while at the same time enhancing their attractiveness to exhibitors.

“We’ve seen a substantial pickup (in foreign-language business) in the past couple of years,” said exhibitor Bob Laemmle. “One of the reasons may be because of the multiplexing. As a single-screen theater, all your eggs are in one basket.”

Buoyed by the success of “Chocolate,” Miramax is showing the 2 1/2-hour Chinese epic film, “Farewell My Concubine,” in 80 theaters. The film, which drew rave reviews, has grossed an impressive $2.2 million in only 38 days.

Other recent foreign-language hits (distributed by other companies) have included the French imports “Tous les Matins du Monde” ($3 million); “Un Coeur en Hiver” ($1.5 million); and “Indochine” ($5.6 million).

Nevertheless, Garvin said, “it’s very difficult for a foreign-language film to do as much box office as an English language film. You do hit a certain number of screens where you meet exhibitor resistance. There are certain houses that simply don’t play foreign-language titles.”

The reluctance to read subtitles is usually cited as the main reason. Very few foreign-language pictures “go through the roof today,” because “audiences have gotten turned off on having to read subtitles, which is a sad thing,” Samuel Goldwyn Jr. said.

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His company, The Samuel Goldwyn Co., was disappointed by the poor performances of both the Swedish “Best Intentions” ($1.3 million), last year’s winner of the prestigious Palme D’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and the more recent “Stolen Children” ($1 million), an Italian import that drew favorable reviews. (Miramax’s disappointments in the last couple of years have included the Italian “Especially on Sunday,” the Russian “Close to Eden” and the Swiss “Journey of Hope”--all of which took in less than half a million dollars.)

Richard Bornstein, Goldwyn’s vice president of worldwide marketing, said the growing competition from other “adult fare” is cutting into the audience for foreign-language films. “People say, ‘I’m kind of tired. I don’t want to read subtitles tonight, so I’ll see (something else) instead,”’ he said.

Paradoxically, dubbing--the one measure that could eliminate this obstacle--is no longer accepted by American audiences, although it has proved successful in Europe and was once commonplace in this country. A 1966 dubbed version of “La Dolce Vita” added to that film’s strong showing, Cohn said.

But, in recent years, tastes have changed. The 1981 German World War II film, “Das Boot,” was released here in two versions--one dubbed and one subtitled. The film became a huge hit, grossing $15 million, but not because of dubbing. “The English-language dub was perfect--I have never seen a dub as good,” recalled Mark Damon, executive producer of “Das Boot.” “Yet there was an awareness (that the film was dubbed), and it took away from the pleasure of most people seeing the picture. We released it in three times as many prints but did 15% of the business (of the subtitled version).”

Given all these hurdles, marketing a foreign film requires special nurturing, said Bingham Ray, co-managing executive of October Films, which distributed “Tous Les Matins” and “Un Coeur.”

Noting that foreign-language films have less appeal among college-age moviegoers than they did a generation ago, Ray said October went directly to campuses to promote its two French films, both of which center on musicians. “We were in French department professors’ faces with both pictures; we were working music departments--from coast to coast, north and south,” Ray said.

“It’s really grass-roots stuff--grind-it-out kind of work,” he added. “A lot of people don’t have patience for this marketplace.”