'Hounddog' is Dakota Fanning's saddest, most disturbing movie

Here's the trailer for the movie "Hounddog" starring Dakota Fanning, Robert Wright Penn, David Morse, Piper Laurie and a few others.



It's actually a decent, touching movie. It starts out slow but gradually improves itself, especially after Dakota Fanning, who plays Lewellen, a nine-year-old Southern girl obsessed with Elvis Presley music, gets raped and tries to deal with the results. Her father, portrayed by David Morse, gets struck nearly dumb by a bolt of lightening on their farm.

The interesting dilemma is the issue of Lewellen's father. Lewellen's aunt claims that Lewellen's grandmother (Lewellen's mother's mother) is in love with Lewellen's father, implying some hinky-pink on the part of the grandmother. The aunt says that the grandmother is keeping the aunt and the father apart so she could have her. It turns out that both Lewellen's mother and aunt desire Lewellen's father, and the aunt wants to take care of Lewellen because she belongs to Lewellen.

It seems that this neglected tween has more people who love her than they actually show her, revealing that, for whatever reason people do things, love (even if it is a twisted, ugly form) is at the root of it - or so this movie indicates. Lewellen's grandmother is cold-hearted and emotionless; her grandmother is obsessed with sin and believing that her granddaughter is a sinner, forcing the girl to pay for her parents' sins by being overly authoritarian. The grandmother is also the reason why Lewellen's parents got married and why Lewellen has never known her mother's sister, her aunt who later comes so they can move in together and Lewellen's aunt can raise her.

Lewellen's father is self-obsessed and indulgent of his child, though there is some implication that Lewellen's father beats her after we see a mark and Lewellen says she will kill her father someday (which she does when she allows a rattlesnake to bite him and not warning him - she merely calls out that she loves him). Since there is only one bed in the two-room house Lewellen and her father live in, the viewers assume that the girl and her father share the bed. This is enforced by a scene when the girl brings a blanket and wraps her father in it and sleeps at his feet under the same blanket. Since she's only nine, there's no reason to believe the father's hurting her sexually, although based on her promiscious tendacies I sort of decided he probably did. Why else does a nine-year-old motherless girl want to see a boy's penis?

Lewellen was a disturbing girl, before and after the teenage boy raped her. Although I don't believe she should have been raped, she certainly didn't help anything when she took off her clothes in front of him and started dancing like Elvis Presley. I understand she is nine and is in love with Elvis and I understand why, but still. She shouldn't have done that.

Her friend Buddy is the classic example of peer pressure surrender. He allows her to get raped so he looks cool in front of her rapist. Lewellen isn't a great friend to him, but that's low. It's clear he just wants to be accepted by these older boys, and will do anything for it. The movie tells us that seeking to be with 'cool' bad kids just leads to a world of hurt and trouble. Just stay away from them.

What should we get from the movie? Pick real friends, don't be too obsessed, and ultimately we decide on what we do in life. We have choices and we make them. Just make the right ones.

The movie deals with grief, promiscuity, betrayal, friendship, family, secrets, lies, sex, race, drinking, parents, children, music, influences, peers, boys, girls, and, of course, rape and the consequences thereof. It is a deeply moving, slightly frightening tale that, in reality, could be someday's story - and maybe it really was.


Rachel