Dir: Craig Brewer
With: Samuel L Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake
Star rating: **

It's dodgy male fantasies a go-go in this slice of Southern gothic named after the Blind Lemon Jefferson song. Christina Ricci is Rae, Justin Timberlake her boyfriend who goes off to the Army. Before his pick-up is out of sight Rae is on the prowl. She's not lovesick, she's luuuurve-sick.

Across town, Lazarus (Samuel L Jackson) is being abandoned by his wife. When Rae is found unconscious by the side of the road after another one-night stand gone wrong, Bible-bashing blues player Lazarus is just the fella to tie her to a radiator with a length of chain and watch her run around in her knickers till she's cured of her "itch". Curiously, no matter how much writhing in the dirt Rae does, her underwear stays whiter than white.

Once the soap-powder commercial directed by the ghost of Benny Hill ends, the characters' backstories start to emerge, and it's here we glimpse what an impressive picture this could have been without the trimmings.

While it's rather like reading Playboy for the articles, there is a story here about damaged people and how they heal, and it's played affectingly by Jackson and Timberlake (Ricci: get yer skirt on, you're nicked for crimes against feminism). Writer-director Craig Brewer, whose Hustle & Flow was about a pimp trying to break into the music biz, shows he's not afraid to push the boundaries; just not sure he's always pushing the right way.