“I’m going to kill my daddy,” says Lewellen (Dakota Fanning) very early in “Hounddog.” Spoiler alert, she does. Snakes, dead or alive, are the symbolic critters of choice for key plot turns, including patricide. Writer, director and producer Deborah Kampmeier goes from one dog getting shotgunned to death, to a lost puppy getting a new home. Fireflies and lightning also figure in the steamy mise-en-scene of fifties Alabama. But Fanning’s turn as Lewellen is the film’s bright spot, as shot by Ed Lachman and Jim Denault. Lewellen tantalizes menfolk when she channels Elvis and his pelvic choreography. Grammie (Piper Laurie) disapproves of such evil. Daddy (David Morse) is turned on by it. “When are you going to sing some real blues, girl?” asks Charles (Afemo Omilami), a wise black man who looks after the horses of a wealthy white family. After a teen with acne who’s the local milkman rapes her, that’s when. “Hounddog” is true to southern tropes. As in Craig Brewer’s “Black Snake Moan,” set in rural Tennessee, a black male healer repairs white female sexuality with folk therapy. As in “Child Bride,” the 1938 exploitation film by Harry Revier, there’s a swimming hole where a girl and her boy pal splash in innocence, although Lewellen is no skinnydipper. “Child Bride” advocated abolishing child marriage customs in Appalachia, and “Hounddog” has a tie-in to the New York City Alliance Against Sexual Assault. After her film was smeared as child porn, Kampmeier identified with both her child star and her child character as victims. “I think there is a societal terror around bringing consciousness to the secret of sexual abuse of children,” writes Kampmeier in her press notes. “Our daughters and our earth are raped and silenced over and over again…. I think that the health of our earth depends on our stories as women being told, our voices being heard.” Snakes are on her side. With Robin Wright Penn, Cody Hanford, Christoph Sanders, Isabelle Fuhrman, Jill Scottand and Ryan Pelton as a living Elvis. 93m. (Bill Stamets)
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