A departure from the script

There are two distinct classes of Cannes Film Festival visitors.

A select few get invited to Paul Allen’s yacht party, and most others don’t. A handful of Cannes visitors stay in five-star beachfront suites, but pretty much everyone else squeezes into small apartments.

And when it comes to buying films, the elite American distributors look for mainstream hits, while the masses are left to pick over the countless foreign-language titles, many of which will never be sold or seen.

For smaller distributors, foreign-language releases have become extremely tricky business. U.S. moviegoers gravitate toward wide-release blockbusters, and for every subtitled hit there are hundreds of fizzles.

What’s worse, supposed art-house theater chains are no longer showing the best from beyond our borders. Fully half of the auditoriums at the Landmark in West Los Angeles this week are booked with “Angels & Demons,” “Star Trek” and “X-Men Origins: Wolverine.”

“With foreign-language films, you have to be selective,” says Michael Barker of Sony Pictures Classics, one of the most accomplished and successful distributors of subtitled movies. “And yes, you have to be much more selective than you used to be.”

In addition to Sony Classics, the few companies that have done well with import movies include Focus Features, IFC Films and Magnolia Pictures.

But now an aggressive company is joining the fold, hoping that it can somehow capitalize on its core cable television audience of gays and lesbians, and transform itself from a distributor of occasional schlock (including Paris Hilton’s “The Hottie & the Nottie” last year) into a destination for award-winning imports.

Regent Releasing is the surprise owner of this year’s surprise foreign-language Oscar winner. “Departures,” which beat favorites “Waltz With Bashir” and “The Class” for the Academy Award, will begin its domestic theatrical release on May 29 in a few cities across the country, including Los Angeles.

A domestic gross of just $1 million is considered a foreign-language home run these days, and hardly any releases pass that modest milestone. Oscar winners, however, have fared comparatively well recently. “The Counterfeiters” grossed about $5.5 million in 2008, “The Lives of Others” sold more than $11.2 million of tickets the year prior, and “Tsotsi” almost reached $3 million in 2006.

“I hope we can get to $3 million to $5 million with ‘Departures,’ ” Stephen Jarchow, Regent’s chairman and chief executive officer, says. “And if it does well, it certainly is going to help the company.”

Regent is part of Here Media, which caters to the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community through magazines (The Advocate), websites ( www.gay.com) and cable television. With 75,00 subscribers in the United States, its pay channel Here plays gay-themed film festival movies including “Shelter” and “Kiss the Bride” and original programs such as “Locker Room.”

In addition to selling “Departures,” a Japanese-language drama set in a funeral home, to the core art-house and Japanese audiences, Jarchow and Regent theatrical marketing vice president Jonathon Aubry also are targeting Here’s constituencies. The belief is that gay and lesbians are twice as likely to attend highbrow, foreign-language releases than the general audience.

“And the great thing about ‘Departures’ is that it is so universally appealing,” Aubry says, “because it deals with death and loss.”

A year and a half ago, Regent decided its theatrical future hinged on subtitled movies. With 20 theatrical releases scheduled for this year and slightly fewer next year, Regent has been one of the more active buyers of foreign-language movies at this year’s festival, acquiring two Cannes market movies, the Spanish “The Fish Child” and the Hebrew “Zion and His Brother.”

“As an independent, you have to be a niche player, and find a place where the majors are not going to muscle you out,” Jarchow says.

All the same, even if “Departures” makes some waves at the box office, other Regent releases (like most foreign-language titles) will struggle to show a profit in theaters.

The true measure of their profit (or loss) will be told in DVD sales and video-on-demand transactions (Here may add a VOD channel for non-GLBT movies soon).

“It’s very hard to break out with a foreign-language picture, especially in the United States,” Jarchow says. “It’s just a fact.”

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john.horn@latimes.com