BOGOTÁ, Colombia - THE candidate running for president in Bolivia has a problem. He is seen as arrogant and aloof, a multimillionaire who has little in common with his countrymen. To top it off, he speaks with a strong American accent, a big strike against him in a country where people are suspicious of foreigners.

But Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada, better known as Goni, also has American political consultants, including James Carville, to guide his political fortunes. Using focus groups and polls, employing a simple message and beginning what one adviser unabashedly calls "a dirty war" against opponents, the strategists-for-hire slowly awaken a moribund campaign.

The tale is not make-believe but rather a new documentary -- "Our Brand Is Crisis" -- that opens on Wednesday at the Film Forum and shortly after in 15 cities nationwide. Like "The War Room," a 1993 film about Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, "Our Brand Is Crisis" takes viewers behind the scenes where strategists, ad men, pollsters and press advisers breath life into a faltering campaign.

While "The War Room" celebrated the Clinton campaign staff, however, "Our Brand Is Crisis" asks a more probing question: Whether Mr. Carville and company, in selling a pro-globalization, pro-American candidate, can export American-style campaigning and values to a country so fundamentally different from the United States.
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