Cash registers are ringing in cinemas across France, where a string of breakout French comedy films has swelled audiences to near record levels in 2014, reports The Guardian.
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.