Hounddog movie review & film summary (2008)

The poverty of her family is indicated by the usual marker: rusting trucks in the lawn. Her father operates a tractor, which during a rainstorm is struck by lightning. This hurls him to the ground and makes him even more dramatically loony. He is seized by anxiety that his daughter will abandon him, and one night he walks into the local tavern seeking her, having failed to notice that he is stark naked. The pool players prod him with their cues. Lewellen stalks in and drags him home.

Somehow amid this chaos, the young girl succeeds in being playful and high-spirited, until she is raped by an older teenager. She grows silent and morose, even comatose, and one night is visited by dozens of (imaginary?) snakes, who crawl in through her bedroom window and perform a function, whether demonic or healing, that is understood by her friend and protector Charles (Afemo Omilami), a black man who works in the stables of the local gentry. He brings her back to health and lectures her about making people treat her with respect.

Moving around the edges of the story is a character known in the credits as Stranger Lady (Robin Wright Penn). Her identity and function are left unclear, except for the fact that it will be immediately obvious to any sentient viewer exactly who she is. It has been some time since I quoted from Ebert's Little Movie Glossary, but the Stranger Lady perfectly fits the Law of Economy of Characters, which teaches us that whenever an important star appears in a seemingly unexplained role, that character will represent the solution to a plot question.

Now about "Hounddog." Lewellen is a passionate fan of Elvis Presley, and has some small local fame for her Elvis impersonations. Her life may be transformed when she hears Charles and his friends, including Jill Scott as Big Mama Thornton, performing in the rhythm and blues tradition that inspired Elvis. Lewellen is obsessed with the news that Elvis will be performing in a local concert and is cruelly tricked when she thinks she can get a ticket. One moonlit night, Elvis himself drives past in a pink Cadillac and blows her a kiss. Yes. Elvis would have driven himself to the concert, alone, down back roads, of course.