Cash registers are ringing in cinemas across France, where a string of breakout French comedy films has swelled audiences to near record levels this year.

With a feelgood film about a deaf family, La Famille Bélier, attracting 2 million cinemagoers since it opened two weeks ago, the French are turning their backs on the economic crisis and heading to the cinemas for a laugh.

According to French box office figures for 2014, a total of 210m tickets were expected to have been sold by the end of New Year’s Eve, almost 10% more than last year.

“The only lesson I take from this is that the audience feels a deep need to be addressed and entertained at the same time. All the more so because we’re going through particularly gloomy times,” says Christian Clavier, the star of 2014’s biggest French hit, Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu. Entitled Serial (Bad) Weddings in English, its irreverent take on mixed marriages has attracted 12.2 million spectators since opening in April. It shows how a conservative couple cope when their three daughters marry an Arab, a Jew and a Chinese man.

Clavier, whose 1993 medieval farce The Visitors took France by storm and who is now promoting a new comedy which opened on Wednesday, says he feels humble about the success of Qu’est-ce qu’on a fait au bon Dieu. He says it came as a surprise.

Right behind Clavier’s film in the box office charts for 2014 is the French comedy Supercondriaque, about a raging hypochondriac, directed by another well-known comic, Dany Boon, who also stars in the film. A total of 5.27 million people have seen it so far.

The breakthrough by the French film comedies this year comes despite strong competition from American blockbusters. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Lucy and the finale of the Hobbit trilogy hold the 3rd, 4th and 5th place in the French charts for 2014.

But a number of other French movies which had been expected to do well, including Bertrand Bonello’s Saint Laurent – one of two films about fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent – and Mathieu Kassovitz’s Vie Sauvage, failed to appeal to the masses.

French commentators have attributed the success of Clavier’s last film to the personal allure of the actor, who now lives in London.

Although he acknowledges the influence of Peter Sellers on his work, Clavier is quintessentially French. “I’m convinced that if a number of my films have been successful, it’s precisely because they conveyed a good deal about France,” he says.

Clavier has teamed up with director Patrice Leconte for the fourth time for his new film, Une Heure de Tranquillité – Do Not Disturb – about a jazz fan who is prevented from listening to a rare album when events conspire against him.

With a tagline of “Selfish – me?”, Leconte hopes that the film, adapted by the writer Florian Zeller from his stage play, will strike a chord with the public. “Everyone can relate to that,” Leconte told a television interviewer.