Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#104425
of 909177 performers
Top 25%
Dominique Lavanant works on quiet performance rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Dominique Lavanant appears in 4 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Dominique. French Fried Vacation 2 is the clearest case: a film rated 7.1 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are quiet performance, comedy, rewatchability. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for war, comedy, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jean-Marie Poiré, Claude Pinoteau, Patrice Leconte, Dominique Lavanant helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
French Fried Vacation 2 (1979) as Christiane Weissmuller · Gramps Is in the Resistance (1983) as Bernadette Bourdelle, fille Bourdelle, fiancée de Michel · The Party (1980) as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
Career snapshot
Ranked #104425 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
4
1978–1983
Career length
5 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.1
French Fried Vacation 2
Average Nutevio score
6.8
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.3
French Fried Vacation 2
Most frequent director
Patrice Leconte
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Patrice Leconte
Most common genre
Comedy
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 41m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.3
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1970s
6.8 average MV
The 1970s are where the work and the material meet. French Fried Vacation 2, French Fried Vacation — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1970s
6.8
Across 2 catalogue films in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1970s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1970s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. French Fried Vacation 2, French Fried Vacation.
Most productive era
1970s
2 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1970s | 1980s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 6.61 film |
| Comedy | 6.82 films | 6.72 films |
| Romance | — | 6.61 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Christiane Weissmuller.
Highest rated performance · Career peak
7.1 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1983Gramps Is in the Resistance
The current state of the argument, as Bernadette Bourdelle, fille Bourdelle, fiancée de Michel.
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
4 of 4 films
as Christiane Weissmuller
Directed by Patrice Leconte
as Bernadette Bourdelle, fille Bourdelle, fiancée de Michel
Directed by Jean-Marie Poiré
as Christiane Weissmuller
Directed by Patrice Leconte
as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
Directed by Claude Pinoteau
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
Christiane Weissmuller
French Fried Vacation 2 (1979)
Performance score7.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. Christiane Weissmuller gives Dominique Lavanant a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Bernadette Bourdelle, fille Bourdelle, fiancée de Michel
Gramps Is in the Resistance (1983)
Performance score6.9
Gramps Is in the Resistance asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Bernadette Bourdelle, fille Bourdelle, fiancée de Michel is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Christiane Weissmuller
French Fried Vacation (1978)
Performance score6.8
French Fried Vacation asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Christiane Weissmuller is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
The Party (1980)
Performance score6.6
The Party asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Vanessa, François' ex-mistress is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as Christiane Weissmuller
Start here. French Fried Vacation 2 is the clearest statement of what Dominique Lavanant does — accessible, 87 minutes, and rated 7.1 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Dominique at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
French Fried Vacation (1978)
Same director as French Fried Vacation 2, different problem to solve. Watching them in order shows how much of the effect was the collaboration.
The Party (1980)
Keeps the comedy register of French Fried Vacation but asks for a colder reading of it.
Gramps Is in the Resistance (1983)
Keeps the comedy register of The Party but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Patrice Leconte
Director
2 films together · 6.8 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
French Fried Vacation 2Jean-Marie Poiré
Director
1 film together · 6.7 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Gramps Is in the ResistanceClaude Pinoteau
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The PartySix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Party
as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Party
as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Dominique Lavanant has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Comedy Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in comedy, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Party
as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
French Fried Vacation 2
as Christiane Weissmuller
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Party
as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
The Party
as Vanessa, François' ex-mistress
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
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Reference
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