The main character in “Hounddog,” Dakota Fanning’s Lewellen, is a smarter, scrappier version of the broken-down girl who turns into Christina Ricci’s bleached-blonde, bare-shouldered tramp in “Black Snake Moan.”

“Black Snake Moan” is a far better film overall than “Hounddog” but leading 12-year-old lady Dakota Fanning carries it like an iPhone. Left to her own ends, she’s at home swimming in her underwear and walking in the tall grass, despite the snakes. And, boy, does Deborah Kampmeir’s movie try to punish her for it.

Without Fanning, one could easily dismiss “Hounddog” as deep-fried Southern cliché, as hard to choke down as a cup of deep-fried Coke. It’s a very nice-looking film, but in between riding the rape roller coaster (she’s walking alone on a deserted lane! She’s hanging out in a hayloft with a bunch of blues musicians passing around a brown jug! She’s reaching from her bed to the milk lad’s offer of a cold bottle and — no! — writhing around horizontally, singing Elvis, as he delivers the rest! Look out little girl!) and playing Johnny Reb Bingo (points for Spanish moss, calling fireflies “lightning bugs,” and poor race relations, though in an irritating bit of cinematic affirmative action, all white men = wolves while all black men = eunuchs) are more gaps than a box of Winn Dixie “Cletus” teeth. If it weren’t for Fanning’s smart portrayal, “Hounddog” could have easily become the Lifetime movie about JonBenet Ramsey.

Everyone wants to disregard the 12-year-old girl who longs to smooch all over Elvis’s sideburns as puppy-lovesick and pure — which Lewellen ain’t. For that, Fanning (who’s weirdly played both a young Ellen DeGeneres and a young Calista Flockhart) creeped out a lot of people, the way Jodie Foster did in “Taxi Driver.” Speaking of which, Foster’s work-in-progress these days is an untitled biopic on Leni Riefenstahl, infamous less for her propaganda films for the Nazis than for the fact that they’re really, irritatingly good propaganda films. I bet Fanning would make a great “Young Leni.”

Despite its flaws, “Hounddog” is still a far, far better film than Jenny Lumet’s “Rachel Getting Married” (also rated R, 2008) in which the audience is taken into another skin-crawlingly creepy landscape — Connecticut.

Where the elite meet to drink wine and eat Indian food at the wedding of the terribly-in-love Rachel and the lead singer of TV on the Radio while fellow Pitchfork-darling Robyn Hitchcock croons. Where rich jerks like Kym (Anne Hathaway) get so sick of all the manicured lawns and maids touching their Misfits posters they get high, commit an unforgivable sin, lose a consumptively hip amount of weight and basically move into rehab and start mainlining recovery bumper stickers. A world where only the help need jobs.

Newcomer Kyrah Julian, a nearly line-less sister of the groom, looks more human than anyone in this movie. Sadly, that includes Bill Irwin, the stage genius whose “The Regard of Flight,” with three cast members, a piano, a trampoline, and a bunch of steamer trunks, is wittier and more tremendous than anything that’s come out of the Lumet family in 30 years. Irwin’s reduced to “generic, fretting dad” in “Rachel Getting Married,” grabbing people’s faces when he’s happy and handing out glasses of milk and meatloaf sandwiches the rest of the time.

I spent the whole movie wanting Kym’s moneyed, scowling extended family to slip Kym a bottle of Percocet and some car keys. Then, I wanted to see them get robbed blind by their caterers. In other words, it was just like a Sofia Coppola movie. Little Lumet’s next project is “This Strange Thing Called Prom.” I bet “This Strange Thing Called Family Dollar” would be a wilder ride.