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This week MTV will begin airing two Flashdance videos featuring Beals, the 19-year-old Yale freshman who was chosen over 4,000 other applicants. Beals has a sweet-sad face, a lean, expressive body and enough sultry energy to bring heat and humidity to her role; but in fact she is just one more erotic element in Lyne's fantasy of smoke, strobe lights and soft focus. Given the exposure, Beals may not mind. Neither do her Big Brothers on Hollywood Boulevard, who could be laughing all the way to 1984.
—By Richard Corliss