Christal Films was at the top domestic film at the box office last week, thanks to a successful opening run of The Chinese Botanist’s Daughters, which played to a very positive per-screen average of some $7,500. The lesbian love story set in rural China drew roughly $60,000 from just eight screens, enough to take the top spot for the week ending Jan. 25.

‘It’s not bad at all,’ says Christal VP Joanne Senécal. ‘We’re very, very happy with the numbers last week.’

The France/Canada copro grossed another $24,000 over this past weekend, she notes, still on nine screens in markets including Gatineau and Quebec City. ‘We’re probably going to move it around a bit, but for now we’re keeping it at nine,’ she says.

The weekend was not as kind to Mount Pleasant, also from Christal, which opened on three screens to ‘very weak’ numbers says Senécal. The movie by Ross Weber peaked in Vancouver with a gross of roughly $4,200, dipping to about $1,000 and lower in Toronto and Montreal.

‘The very weird thing about it is we had rave reviews, and it’s [our] lowest box office,’ she says, conceding that the remainder of its run will be ‘a rough ride.’

The previous chart topper, Roméo et Juliette, slipped to number two for the week, slowing down after its holiday season stampede that has, to date, grossed $1.3 million across Quebec. It took $35,000 at last week’s box office, playing on 38 screens via Alliance Atlantis Vivafilm.

Manufactured Landscapes, meanwhile, dropped to number three. The per screens of the photography documentary, handled by Mongrel Media, are also cooling after 16 weeks in limited release, down to some $2,400 last week from a recent high in the $4,000s. Its total box-office take stands at just over $300,000.

Mongrel was also due to release How She Move on March 9, but has pushed the urban dance drama to sometime next year in order to co-ordinate with Paramount Vantage. How She Move, produced by Toronto’s Sienna Films, was picked up by the Hollywood specialty distributor last week at the Sundance festival and, according to Mongrel, could see theaters on both sides of the border in January 2008.

Other domestic titles due in theaters shortly include the Indian history epic Partitiion, on Feb. 2 from Seville, the French-language drama Dans les villes, due on three screens Feb. 23 from TVA Films, and Nos voisins Dhantsu, also due on Feb. 23 from Christal. The comedy, likened by Senécal to the Borat and Jackass films, will be released on 75 prints.