A few heads turn to witness Dominique Swain whooping over the recollection of an 8-year-old memory. Swain is recalling how she felt upon learning she had been tabbed for a ``Lolita'' audition (she ultimately won the role). Forget the audition, said Swain. It was the beginning of summer and the then 14-year-old Malibu resident was getting a free trip to New York.

Swain isn't one to hold back, whether among friends or during an interview at a still-crowded Woodland Hills food court. She lives, she laughs, she whoops, and she goes for it, whether the target is Lolita, a soul-searching sorority sister, or an abused Appalachian wife in search of her true love (in the upcoming ``Briar Patch'').

``I'm very enthusiastic about things,'' she says.

Whoo-hoo indeed. 'IT'S THE SYSTEM!'

``We loved Dominique; she's so much fun,'' says Adam Larson Broder, the writer and co-director of the recently released film ``Pumpkin,'' in which Swain has a featured role. ``She was so interested in the role, and we did some fun things with her.''

Playing Jeanine Kryszinsky, the misfit roommate of Christina Ricci's Carolyn McDuffy, Swain is dark-haired and dumpy, badly dressed and seemingly caught in an endless bad-hair-day cycle. It's Swain who gets arguably the film's funniest line. Faced with a challenged athlete that she's supposed to be helping, a wigging-out Jeanine breaks down and bolts, but not before telling the bewildered student, ``It's not you. It's the !ital!system!!off!''

Swain is not, she hastens to point out, the film's lead. ``Pumpkin'' is the story of sorority belle Carolyn's transformation as she falls in love with Pumpkin Romanoff (played by Hank Harris), another physically and developmentally challenged athlete. Jeanine helps Carolyn's process along, and she undergoes a kind of metamorphosis of her own.

``Basically, she's on the verge of combusting at any moment,'' says Swain, 21, utterly unrecognizable from her on-screen presence in jeans and newly died reddish hair. ``You just feel like her face is twitching with rage at things that would not make a normal person upset.

``I really copied her body language from my sister, who was having a complete tantrum right before we were shooting. I was, like, 'Oh, my God, she's Jeanine. I'm not Jeanine. !ital!She's!off! Jeanine, but I can use that.' ''

Swain first got hold of the ``Pumpkin'' script when she was 17 and too young for any of the roles. But the film's ``Beauty and the Beast'' premise intrigued her. A few years later, with Christina Ricci on board (as star and producer) and financing secured by by Francis Ford Coppola's film company, American Zoetrope, ``Pumpkin'' dropped back into Swain's lap.

Those who remember her in ``Lolita'' and ``Face/Off'' may not even recognize Swain in ``Pumpkin.'' Swain hopes they don't.

``That was a big part of my taking it on,'' she says. ``I was considering whether I wanted to be billed as myself, but I think contractually, I didn't have a choice.'' 'THIS TOWN IS TOUGH'

Melanie Griffith, who played Lolita Haze's mother, Charlotte, opposite Swain in Adrian Lyne's film, recalls the ``fabulous gawky 15-year-old.'' Herself an actress from her teen years, Griffith also recalls a studio system that isn't exactly friendly to young performers.

``This town is tough,'' said Griffith. ``I don't think anything has to do with when you're making the movie. It's afterward. It's the press and how the studio takes care of you or doesn't take care of you. These days, I don't think anybody takes care of anybody very much.''

Swain never really had the chance to find out. ``Lolita,'' which might have become her early career-defining role, got tied up in controversy over its edgy subject matter and had difficulty finding distribution. The adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's tale of a middle-age professor in love with a 12-year-old nymphette, ``Lolita'' eventually had a limited theatrical release and ended up on Showtime.

By the time viewers saw finally saw ``Lolita,'' Swain was a high school senior who no longer resembled the character she was playing. And it was back to the audition pool for the still largely unknown actress.

``All in all, it was sort of lame,'' Swain says. ``I really enjoyed 'Lolita,' and it was an amazing experience, but it also totally impassioned me to acting, and it would have been convenient if people could have seen my movie when I was the age that I was playing in the movie.

``Maybe I would not have been ready for any kind of stardom, if that would have even happened had it had a normal release. I don't know,'' she continues. ``I don't regret it, but I don't know what would have happened otherwise. It's just an interesting course to think about, even though totally futile.'' THE MISEDUCATION OF LOLITA

After ``Lolita'' and ``Face/Off,'' Swain took roles in several smaller independent movies, including ``Tart,'' ``Girl'' and ``The Intern.'' She enrolled in college, but immediately landed the Daniel Waters film ``Happy Campers.'' If she's ever hard up for work again, she figures she'll just sign up for classes again ``because I'm sure I'll get something I can't pass up.''

``Education has been really important in my family, and I'm sure that I will go back, but I feel like you only have one time when you are a certain age and have a certain experience level and are appropriate for telling a certain kind of story,'' she says.

Between the dark-edged ``Briar Patch,'' ``Pumpkin'' and ``Lolita,'' Swain would seem to have a knack for projects that won't have an easy road to the multiplexes.

``In the '60s,'' she says, ``they called it 'the curse of Lolita,' '' she says.

What would Swain call it?

``Uncommercial sensibilities,'' she says. ``I just feel like it's totally arbitrary who gets financed, and some people just don't know what they're doing. I think if you love the script, you should give it a shot, but you never really know.''

Interview by EVAN HENERSON
Los Angeles Daily News