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Dakota Fanning got sold a bill of goods. Playing Lewellen, the Elvis-loving protagonist of Hounddog, gives her yet another opportunity to prove how frighteningly talented she is, but the movie is an absolute disaster from start to finish. Fanning does a yeoman's job making Lewellen burst off the screen, but writer/director Deborah Kampmeier asks the young actress to perform the unthinkable, and the result is unconscionable.

The much-ballyhooed rape scene turns out to be one of the most restrained moments in the film. There's nothing exploitative about the way Kampmeier stages the scene; this is no Bastard out of Carolina. It's the singing that degrades Fanning, particularly the final catharsis where she sings out her pain with an all-black blues band. It's an embarrassing story choice that's made worse by Kampmeier's fumbling earnestness. Fanning has a lovely singing voice, and even a little bit of soul, but the moment is completely contrived and false--making it all of a piece with the rest of the film, laden as it is with Southern clichés.

There's some kind of story here involving Lewellen's father Lew (David Morse) and his sometime girlfriend Ellen (the too-beautiful-for-this-movie Robin Wright Penn), but it never quite gels because Kampmeier tries and fails to tell the story sideways. Wright Penn shines as usual, particularly with a well-written monologue where she's recalling her childhood, but the scene has nothing to do with the rest of the film. Morse is given nothing to do but look silly in a bad wig, while Piper Laurie does her best in the collection of stereotypes that comprise Lewellen's grandmother. The actor who fares worst is Afemo Omilami, an older black man who's filled with mystical folklore and exists only to connect the white characters back to what's True and Real. Not even the finest actor could make this character a real person, as hard as Omilami tries.

Lewellen, as Fanning plays her, is a light in the darkness. The young actress commands the screen with her intelligence and charisma, and she deserves praise for her capable handling of difficult material. Hounddog, for all its bravura, doesn't have even one iota of the authenticity that Fanning brings to this hackneyed material.