Pop-star Vanessa Paradis was something of a national joke in France. When she pranced on the scene at 14, the media mockingly characterized her as little Lolita or pop-rock's nymphet queen. As for that babyish voice incessantly cooing hits like "Joe le taxi", "Marilyn And John" (about the affair between the actress and the U.S. president) and "Coupe-Coupe", why it was just too much for refined French ears. If the great Edith Piaf had affectionately been known as "the little sparrow, " Paradis was no more than a "trained little monkey" that would hopefully one day go away and grow up. They hadn't counted on Noce Blanche (White Wedding), Jean-Claude Brisseau's tragic new film starring the now 17-year-old Paradis as Mathilde, a fatalistic young girl who falls desperately in love with her 50-year-old married highschool teacher in a provincial town. Screen debut Since it opened in France two weeks ago, Noce Blanche has already zoomed to the number two spot at a box office dominated by Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade. As for the peevish French press, they've done a 360-degree pirouette and are now comparing Paradis' heart-stopping screen debut with that of goddess Isabelle Adjani 13 years ago. "I didn't expect that at all," Paradis admitted in an interview in Montreal. "There were journalists, who in the past wrote very mean things about me, and now they're saying: 'She can do everything. She's a real star!' "I'd like to look them in they eye and punch them on the nose. "But, on the other hand," she offers in her little-girl voice, "I have the impression, I won, no?" The winner is wearing a gray Harley-Davidson T-shirt and black slacks tucked into chic black cowboy boots. She smokes rather a lot for a growing teenager. Yet the effect is still one of incredible feminine fragility on account of Paradis' pretty fine-boned features and ultra-slender frame - she's five-feet-five-inches tall and weighs 96 pounds. "Even though I'm only a little thing with a litte voice, in my head I see myself as much bigger and stronger. She adds with a catch-in-her-voice: "I've experienced some very painful things which have, well, widened my shoulders." Things like being booed when she won the Midem song contest at 14 with "Joe le taxi". The record, however, went on to sell two million copies and these days Paradis employs five people to handle her career. "Before this film I had a very bad image in France," continues the pop star who onced snapped at a French journalist who remarked on her surprising intelligence: "Look, I know that I'm not Einstein, but I'm not the queen of the imbeciles, either!" She was offered lightweight film roles, but she was holding out for one that would, once and for all, pulverize her image as a prefabricated bimbo. Yet her reputation was so widespread that even Brisseau was prepared not to like her. Fifteen days before he was to start shooting, the director realized that the actress he originally hired wouldn't work out. He was desperate. By chance, his wife saw Paradis dancing on a TV show and taped it for her husband. "You can cheat with many things," says the stern 45-year-old Brisseau, himself a former schoolteacher, "but not dancing. That takes discipline. So I thought, 'All right, she can learn.' " Indeed, Paradis, who comes from a well-heeled bourgeois family, credits the ballet lessons she began at age four with instilling enormous self-discipline. "Work doesn't scare me. My approach is that when you take something on, you see it through until the end, even if sometimes it's not all that pleasant." And one gathers that Paradis and Brisseau pawed the ground a few times on the set of Noce Blanche. One round she won was to cut down the film's nude scenes, but she defends the ones that remain. "It's true that some people could be shocked that I'm in the nude, because after all, it's my first film. I could have refused. But it's such a great role and those are the concessions one has to make. "Besides," she adds with a shrug, "I don't think it's so serious." 'A natural' If Paradis has a fear, it's that her fans might find her ugly. Frail and wan, with circles under her eyes, mysterious Mathilde Tessier has a way of confronting the object of her desire (barrel-chested Bruno Cremer as the highschool teacher) and the camera that is oddly alarming in its frankness. It's the kind of screen debut that makes one trust in the old phrase "a natural." Paradis offers a more down-to-earth explanation. "The thing with me is I am neither a singer nor an actress. I sing, but I don 't know how to sing. I act, but I don't know how to act. What I've done up until now has been on sheer instinct." So yes, she intends to study acting, because she's definitely in for the long haul.