Film with rape scene featuring 12-year-old actress stirs debate

PARK CITY, Utah -- At a festival that features several films with sexual content, including full male nudity and a documentary about bestiality, a Southern Gothic tale that includes the rape of a young girl is causing the biggest stir.\n"Hounddog" is the story of Lewellen, a girl played by 12-year-old Dakota Fanning, who is growing up in the 1960s South. She is a free-spirit obsessed with Elvis Presley and has little supervision by her abusive father and alcoholic grandmother.\nEven before the first screening of "Hounddog" at the Sundance Film Festival this week, a Christian film critic, citing Fanning's age, decried the movie as child abuse, and Roman Catholic activist Bill Donohue called for a federal investigation.\nFanning is defending her work as well as the movie, and so is the head of Sundance, who said it was courageous for director Deborah Kampmeier to tackle "challenging material." "Hounddog" is entered in the festival's dramatic category.\n"It's not a rape movie," Fanning said Tuesday. "That's not even the point of the film."\nThe disturbing scene lasts a few minutes but is not graphic. There is no nudity, the scene is very darkly lit and only Fanning's face and hand are shown.\nKampmeier said it took her a decade to get the film made, largely because of the rape scene, but cutting it was a compromise she was unwilling to make.\n"This issue is so silenced in our society. There are a lot of women who are alone with this story," she said.