After hearing about the controversy, I thought the film was going to be a dark, sexually charged coming of age film. And to a degree it is but not to the degree the buzz had led me to expect. The darkness comes late in the film and the film is ultimately about overcoming adversity and getting a chance at redemption and starting over. Set deep in the South in the 1950s, Fanning plays Lewellen, a wild child whose drunken father (David Morse) provides neither love nor supervision. But Lewellen finds joy in imitating Elvis and doing renditions of songs such as Hound Dog, complete with swiveling hips. She strikes one as both sexually precocious and something of an innocent. But it's her obsession with Elvis that eventually leads to an abusive sexual encounter with a man who promises her tickets to an Elvis concert in exchange for a private performance of Hound Dog.
