Hound Dog Bottom Line: Courageous and po...
Hound Dog Bottom Line: Courageous and powerful fable about a young girl's rape.
Posted by
Collegekid 529 days ago
"Hounddog" is the bete noire at this year's Sundance Film Festival. But as is often the case, most of the protests were coming from people who haven't seen it. There is nothing exploitive or sensationalized about the story of a 12-year-old girl's rape in the rural South in the late 1950s. Starring Dakota Fanning in an absolutely riveting performance, the film, directed by Deborah Kampmeier, is a cautionary tale of what happens to all too many young girls. It's a courageous film, and subject matter and controversy will undoubtedly create some curiosity at the boxoffice.
Prefestival buzz about the danger of exposing poor 12-year-old Fanning to this kind of material proves unwarranted and disingenuous in a society that is constantly sexualizing young girls. The character's sexual awakening just happens to be in 1958, triggered in part by the eroticism of Elvis Presley's music. As Lewellen, a jewel among the rotting cars and run-down shacks in rural Alabama, Fanning projects a strange mix of innocence and awareness. The triumph of her performance is her ability to turn it on and off in the same scene, sometimes even in the same shot.
Lewellen shuttles back and forth between living with her abusive, alcoholic father (David Morse) and her strict, God-fearing grandmother (Piper Laurie, reprising her role from "Carrie"). For a young girl just hitting puberty, the mix of repressiveness and permissiveness (she sips from her father's beer bottle) has to be confusing. Her mother long out of the picture, she desperately wants a female role model, a role that her father's sometime girlfriend (Robin Wright Penn) is in no shape to provide. As a child, she was probably raped, too.
Lewellen is pretty much left to figure things out for herself. Her only friend is Buddy (Cody Hanford), a sweet neighborhood boy for whom she has a normal sexual curiosity. The sole adult looking out for her is Charles (Afemo Omilami), a horse trainer for the rich people. As an embodiment of the female spirit and the injustice women endure, Lewellen has an instinctive
Prefestival buzz about the danger of exposing poor 12-year-old Fanning to this kind of material proves unwarranted and disingenuous in a society that is constantly sexualizing young girls. The character's sexual awakening just happens to be in 1958, triggered in part by the eroticism of Elvis Presley's music. As Lewellen, a jewel among the rotting cars and run-down shacks in rural Alabama, Fanning projects a strange mix of innocence and awareness. The triumph of her performance is her ability to turn it on and off in the same scene, sometimes even in the same shot.
Lewellen shuttles back and forth between living with her abusive, alcoholic father (David Morse) and her strict, God-fearing grandmother (Piper Laurie, reprising her role from "Carrie"). For a young girl just hitting puberty, the mix of repressiveness and permissiveness (she sips from her father's beer bottle) has to be confusing. Her mother long out of the picture, she desperately wants a female role model, a role that her father's sometime girlfriend (Robin Wright Penn) is in no shape to provide. As a child, she was probably raped, too.
Lewellen is pretty much left to figure things out for herself. Her only friend is Buddy (Cody Hanford), a sweet neighborhood boy for whom she has a normal sexual curiosity. The sole adult looking out for her is Charles (Afemo Omilami), a horse trainer for the rich people. As an embodiment of the female spirit and the injustice women endure, Lewellen has an instinctive
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