Festival Gems : AFI offers ‘Sweet Jane,’ ‘Cost of Living,’ featuring original women in gritty roles, and lots more.

Not all the noteworthy films in any festival are available for advance screening, but as usual, previews for this year’s Los Angeles International Film Festival yielded some gems.

AFI Fest opens tonight at 7:30 p.m. at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard with theworld premiere of Beeban Kidron’s “Swept From the Sea,” starring Rachel Weisz and Vincent Perez and inspired by a Joseph Conrad story, and closes with Alan Rudolph’s romantic comedy drama “Afterglow,” starring Nick Nolte and Julie Christie, on Oct. 30 at 8 p.m. at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

(In addition to the Chinese, the festival will hold a few screenings at the Galaxy and the Monica 4-Plex in Santa Monica.)

In between are some stunners. Zhang Yuan’s “East Palace, West Palace” (Monica 4-Plex Wednesday at 9:15 p.m. and Chinese Thursday at 5 p.m.) is a powerful and elegant two-character psychological drama. In it, a young, slender gay man (Si Han), arrested in a cruising area on the vast park-like grounds of Beijing’s Forbidden City, begins a battle of wits with the macho arresting officer (Hu Jun) detaining him in park headquarters. Zhang makes an all-out assault on homophobia as he builds suspense and tension. “East Palace, West Palace” is a brave and audacious film and, not surprisingly, was made outside the official Chinese motion picture industry.

Zhang Yimou, one of China’s most famous directors, offers a radical departure with his “Keep Cool” (Chinese Saturday at 10:30 p.m. and Monica 4-Plex Monday at 10 p.m.), set in present-day Beijing and filmed entirely with a hand-held camera. A jolting departure for the maker of such classically elegant period pieces as “Raise the Red Lantern” and “Shanghai Triad,” “Keep Cool” centers on the pursuit of a sexy, free-spirited young woman (Qu Ying) by a Beijing bookseller (Jiang Wen).

There is also an overly protracted wrangle between the bookseller and an elderly scholar (Li Baotian) whose laptop computer is destroyed when he comes to the aid of the bookseller who is attacked by thugs. The scholar feels the bookseller owes him a new laptop.

The film is a subtle commentary on changing times in China--hence the film’s cautionary title--but it doesn’t travel nearly as well as Zhang’s epic masterpieces.

Based on the classic Dutch novel by F. Bordewijk, Mike van Diem’s “Character” (Chinese Sunday at 10:15 p.m. and Monica 4-Plex Tuesday at 3:30 p.m.) is a superb period piece, set in Amsterdam in the ‘20s. Its hero (Fedja van Hue^t) has the most forbidding parents imaginable: an implacable court bailiff (Jan Decleir), also a banker and entrepreneur, who in a one-time sexual encounter, leaves his stoic young maid (Betty Schuurman) pregnant.

Defiantly independent, this near-silent woman refuses to marry him or to accept any financial aid. Their son grows up determined to be a success in law and banking, which only inflames his father’s rage at having been rejected by his mother. There is a Dickensian sense of passion and obsessiveness to “Character,” a tale of emotion strangled by pride.

Joe Gayton’s “Sweet Jane” (Monica 4-Plex Friday at 10:45 p.m. and Sunday at 6 p.m.) is a knockout. What could so easily be shamelessly sentimental becomes an overwhelming emotional experience, thanks to Gayton’s total dedication to his people, their story and his greatly gifted actors.

In a role worthy of a Michelle Pfeiffer, Samantha Mathis glows as a pretty but wasted prostitute-junkie--”junkette,” in her own flip self-description--who attracts a 15-year-old runaway (Joseph Gordon-Levitt). What ensues is as familiar as the meaner streets of L.A. in which it is filmed, but “Sweet Jane” has such unexpected impact it’s as if we never before had ever seen a picture about a hooker with a heart of gold or a savagely abused orphan.

Michael Davis “Eight Days a Week” (Monica 4-Plex Saturday at 5:20 p.m. and Wednesday at 9:30 p.m.) is overly talky, but the dialogue is so good you may not mind. Joshua Schaefer stars as Peter, a scrawny 17-year-old with glasses who’s so enamored of the gorgeous girl (Keri Schaefer) across the street he decides to camp on her front lawn until she hopefully capitulates.

Davis brings to Peter’s predicament compassion, imagination and much raunchy humor. This kid and his best pal (R.D. Robb) talk about sex like the teenage males they are. Davis charts Peter’s growing awareness of the other neighbors, allowing him to become gradually aware of how little he knows about them. This aspect of the picture, one of its strongest, might have been developed a tad more to offset the inherent static quality of Peter’s front-yard stakeout.

Stan Schofield’s “Cost of Living” (Monica 4-Plex Sunday at 10:30 p.m. and Tuesday at 1:15 p.m.) is overly long and drawn-out, but Edie Falco is so arresting she holds your attention from start to finish. Falco plays Billie, a lean, wiry drifter, a tender-tough type with streaked blond hair. She lingers in a seaport town long enough to get mixed up with some young macho fishermen. While a number of the actors seem as mannered and posturing as the guys they play, Falco creates an indelible portrait of a woman struggling to place independence ahead of emotions.

There are two fine films focusing on children trying to make sense of the adult world. Majid Majidi’s warm and poignant “Children of Heaven” (Chinese Friday at 9:45 p.m. and Monica 4-Plex Sunday at 5:30 p.m.) will inevitably recall Jafar Panahi’s “The White Balloon” as a poor 9-year-old boy loses his little sister’s shoes while on an errand.

The other film is “Little Fugitive” (Monica 4-Plex Tuesday at 6:15 p.m.), the 1953 classic made by photographer Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin and Ray Ashley about a little boy wandering through Coney Island in the belief that he has accidentally killed his older brother.

No festival would be complete without an extravagant period melodrama that is sure to strike much of the audience as unintentionally hilarious. This year Agnes Merlet’s “Artemisia” (Chinese Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Monica 4-Plex Oct. 30 at 7 p.m.) fills the bill and then some. It’s Merlet’s fevered, cliche-ridden imagining of tempestuous 17th century painter Artemesia Gandeleschi, who complains, “I’ll never get anywhere if I can’t paint naked men!” Nothing stops our convent-bred, teenage rebel until she loses her virginity to famous painter Agostino Tassi (Miki Manojlovic), a swarthy, virile type who “paints saints by day and sins by night.” Tassi is put on trial, accused of raping her, but when she insists he did not, all hell breaks loose.

Among promising films unfinished in time for previews are Daniel Petrie Sr.’s “The Assistant” (Monica 4-Plex Friday at 7:45 p.m. and Chinese Sunday at 1 p.m.), a coming of age story set in the waning days of the Depression and featuring Joan Plowright and Armin Mueller-Stahl, and Henry Jaglom’s “Deja Vu” (Chinese Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Monica 4-Plex at 8:30 p.m.), which explores the question of fate and choice in relationships. The LosAngeles Film Critics Assn. is presenting a surprise feature Sunday at 7:30 p.m. at the Chinese.

AFI Fest will also present two panel discussions and other special events. “Notes on Film” a probe of the relationship between music and movies hosted by KCRW’s Chris Douridas, will be held Sunday at 3 p.m. at Hear Music, 1429 3rd St. Promenade, Santa Monica. “Breaking & Entering,” moderated by writer Billy Frolick, author of “What I Really Want to Do Is Direct,” will tackle the perennial problem of making it in Hollywood. It will be held at Saturday at 1:30 p.m. at the Cinegrill of the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, 7000 Hollywood Blvd.

Also part of the AFI Fest is a special presentation “Feats of Clay,” a celebration of 100 years of stop-motion animation, which screens Sunday at 5 p.m. at the Chinese.

Veteran low-budget producer Samuel Z. Arkoff will host a Halloween All-Night Movie Marathon, composed of 13 hours of horror-sci fi cult films, at the Cinerama Dome, 6360 Sunset Blvd., Hollywood, beginning at 8 p.m. on Oct. 31. A $15 ticket includes a continental breakfast.

For festival information: (213) 856-7707. Tickets: (213) 520-2000.

* BE THERE: Festival listings, Pages 29-30.