Hot Shoulders

These shoulders smolder. Warm against the rumpled pillows of a Riviera hotel bedroom, exposed by the new wave of strapless black dresses, these are the shoulders of the hottest vedette since Bardot: Beatrice Dalle. ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY reports

ashiny black sedan pulls up to the curb, the door swings open. The first thing out is a foot, encased in black suede—slingback—stiletto heel—zippers. It's like a shot from one of those sophisticated French movies of the forties, maybe Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne. Beatrice Dalle begins her slow-motion walk toward the check-in counter for the airbus from Paris to Nice, her curvaceous hourglass figure a choral dialogue of hips and shoulders. A provocative little black-fox muff, with darting beady eyes, swings from a silk cord over her black trench coat. Frenchmen ogle her huge, innocent eyes, her almost littlegirl pout. Middle-aged women come up and ask for autographs for their daughters.

At twenty-one, Beatrice Dalle is France's new cinematic sex kitten. Her first-ever role is as Betty Blue, a world-weary, vagabond teenager, in JeanJacques Beineix's new film, 37°2 le Matin. Married to a twenty-seven-year-old French painter named Jean-Frangois, whom she met at a disco, Dalle was found by Beineix in a photo magazine, all dolled up to look like a latter-day Lolita. Her luminous skin, her chaise longue lips, her languorous tawny eyes, her atmosphere of fleshpot sexiness are now all over French talk shows and magazine covers.

The next morning Dalle is up at the crack of Monte Carlo's dawn, tipping the makeup man and raving over the simple black strapless dresses. "I'm crazy about this Dior dress—it is just the kind of dress I would buy if I had a lot of money." She dreams of being a big spender with future projects. She longs to land in New York one day, to have an hotel particulier in Paris's fashionable Le Marais, to earn enough money to drench herself in big matching sets of diamonds the way stars wore them on the Riviera in the fifties, to possess furs and more furs.

Changing from one black strapless sliver to another— carefully balling up her stockings and putting them inside the ubiquitous muff to avoid any further abuse—she talks about all the nude scenes in her first film role: "It's something I wouldn't repeat. At home I am never nude, I am always in a bodysuit, as I am very, very prudish." Indeed, even in bed with her husband, she says, nothing pleases Dalle more than sewing a bedspread while watching (boring) French television.