Madonna

The books-provocatively placed? — on the coffee table between us are Jeux des Dames Cruelles, by Serge Nazarieff, which would appear from its cover to be a history of spanking, and two books by the French photographer Bettina Rheims, whose pictures of women are harsh, raw, and erotic. Directly overhead, fixed to the ceiling, is a huge 19th-century French oil of a nude Diana with an unclothed Endymion — the only naked guy in the place.

''It's something that I felt compelled to do,'' Madonna says of Truth or Dare. ''I was very moved by the group of people I was with. I felt like their brother, their sister, their mother, their daughter — and then I also thought that they could do anything. And that we could do anything on stage.'' ''Because the show was so demanding, so complex — whenever you go through something really intense with a group of people it brings you closer together. And ultimately, though I'd set out to document the show, just to get it on film, when I started looking at the footage I said, 'This is so interesting to me. There's a movie here. There's something here.'''

Much will be made of the psychodrama within the tour's all-male dance troupe, all but one of whom is gay. But the most highly charged passages in Truth or Dare revolve around (who else?) Madonna herself. One is a brief tête-à-tête between the star and her close friend, actress Sandra Bernhard; the two were the subject of much buzzing a couple of years ago when a coy joint appearance on Late Night With David Letterman seemed to hint there might be more to their friendship than friendliness. In the movie Madonna tells Bernhard how, as a little girl whose mother had just died, she slept in her father's bed; she then makes an unsettling joke about having sex with him. (''It's a joke, for God's sakes!'' Madonna protests to me.) This, in turn, leads to more sex talk. Madonna: ''Are you still sleeping with her?'' Bernhard: ''I hate her.'' Madonna: ''I hate everybody I sleep with.'' Bernhard: ''That's why you sleep with them.'' Bernhard asks who in the world she'd most like to meet. Madonna says, ''I don't know. I think I've met everybody.''

This is, of course, a cozy meeting between two visible participants and four unseen ones: camera, light, sound, and director. And as is the case throughout Truth or Dare, there are several levels of meaning at work, some intended and some not, many ajar with each other.

The star seems perfectly comfortable with the contradictions; her friend does not. Bernhard, a powerful, abrasive presence onstage, a wonderful actress when the situation calls for acting, seems shy, ill at ease. Is this an intimate meeting between friends or a movie scene? If it's a movie, where is the script? If it's a documentary, where's the reality?

Now I mention the scene to Madonna, and say that one charge her critics have consistently made is that she lacks vulnerability. ''It seemed to me,'' I say, ''that even in those moments in the movie when you would appear to be most vulnerable, you're so in control.'' She folds her arms. ''Uh-huh.'' I tell her I thought Sandra Bernhard had the look, in that sequence, of a civilian.

''And I didn't?''

''Not for a second.''

She laughs nervously. ''What did I look like?''

''You looked like Madonna,'' I say.

''And I'm not a civilian?''

''I can't imagine you being a civilian. Now, that may be my failure of imagination.''

''It is,'' she says. ''I think that you're suffering from what the mass population suffers from — once you put somebody on a pedestal, you can't see them any other way. I think you should watch the movie again. I disagree with you.''

''I'm glad you do.'' ''Because you would hate to think I was invulnerable — is that what you were going to say next? I don't think one can get through life being invulnerable.''

Nevertheless, I say, her strength is formidable.

''Well, you better be strong if you're gonna be in this fight — that's all I can say.''

That superstars are embattled comes as no surprise. But few have girded themselves this well: You have to look hard to find signs of Madonna's vulnerability in Truth or Dare. Still, in revealing her toughness, the movie appears to have gone further than even she expected.

''I think she didn't understand what she was getting into,'' Bernhard says, later. ''Her life is all about staying in the public eye, and staying revered and needed and desired. Her addiction to attention is so intense that she'll go to any lengths to get it — to the detriment of her sanity, and of her soul, sometimes. It's not necessarily an admirable trait.''

''Does anyone talk about how crazy this is?'' Warren Beatty says, on-screen and mid-tour in Truth or Dare, while Madonna has her severely taxed larynx examined by a doctor.

''Is there anything you want to say off-camera?'' the doctor asks Madonna.

''She doesn't want to live off-camera, much less talk,'' Beatty says.

(Madonna says she felt Beatty didn't take Truth or Dare seriously while it was being made — ''He just thought I was making a home movie'' — and hasn't seen it. ''I think that his agents and his publicists and people close to his lawyers — they've all seen it,'' she says. ''And basically reported back to him that he's okay in it, that it's not a debacle.'')