Storyline Nell is a girl who's been brought up in an isolated world. The only people she knew were her mother and twin sister. They lived together in a cottage in the forest. Nobody has ever met Nell. After her mother's death, she's discovered by the local doctor Jerome. He's fascinated by her, since she speaks a mangled language, developed by her sister and herself growing up, "twin speak" if you will. But Paula, a psychology student, wants her observed in a laboratory. The judge decides they get three months to observe her in the forest, after which he'll decide about Nell's future.
Writers: Mark Handley, William Nicholson
Cast: Jodie Foster
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Nell
Liam Neeson
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Jerome Lovell
Natasha Richardson
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Paula Olsen
Richard Libertini
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Alexander Paley
Nick Searcy
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Todd Peterson
Robin Mullins
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Mary Peterson
Jeremy Davies
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Billy Fisher
O'Neal Compton
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Don Fontana
Heather M. Bomba
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Twin #1
Marianne E. Bomba
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Twin #2
Sean Bridgers
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Mike Ibarra
Joe Inscoe
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Judge
Stephanie Dawn Wood
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Ruthie Lovell
Mary Lynn Riner
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Janet Baring
Lucile McIntyre
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Sally
Taglines:
Her heart. Her soul. Her language are a mystery...A mystery called Nell.
Release Date: 23 December 1994
Filming Locations: Angel Medical Center, Franklin, North Carolina, USA
Gross: $33,592,700
(USA)
Technical Specs
Runtime:
Did You Know?
Trivia: Jodie Foster originally planned to direct the film herself but turned it over to Michael Apted instead.
Goofs:
Revealing mistakes:
(At 43:12) Nell swims in the nude, but when on the shore and dancing, she has on underwear.
Quotes: Paula:
What is it with you and Nell? Jerry:
It's like... there's no one else in the world. Like she doesn't need anybody. Can you live your whole life that way, or does it drive you crazy in the end?
User Review
One of the finest and most powerful films of the Nineties
Rating: 10/10
In the late 1970s two young girls named Virginia and Grace Kennedy
caused great interest in the academic disciplines of psychology and
linguistics. The girls, identical twin sisters, had developed a private
language quite incomprehensible to outsiders. Even after they had
learnt English, they continued to communicate with each other in their
secret language, which was partly a mixture of distorted English and
the German that was their grandmother's native tongue, but which also
contained some inexplicable vocabulary items.
This was an example of an uncommon, but not unprecedented, phenomenon
known as 'idioglossia' or 'cryptophasia'. 'Nell' tells the story of an
even more extreme example of the same phenomenon. An eccentric and
reclusive old woman named Violet Kellty is found dead in her home, a
wooden cabin without electricity or running water in a remote mountain
are of North Carolina. The local doctor, Jerry Lovell, visits the
property to certify the death and discovers that, unknown to the
community, Violet had a daughter, Nell, living with her. Nell is unable
to speak English and can only speak an unknown language. Although in
her late twenties, she has never been outside her home and the forests
which surround it, and knows nothing of the outside world.
A psychiatrist, Paula Olsen, sent to investigate the case, decides that
Nell is mentally retarded, but Lovell, who is becoming increasingly
fascinated by this strange young woman, contests this diagnosis. The
judge responsible for deciding Nell's future, decides that she should
be kept under observation for three months so that more information can
be obtained. Jerry and Paula move into the woods to observe, and
gradually start to find out more about Nell's past. They learn that she
had a twin sister, May, who died as a child, and that her
seemingly-strange speech is actually a mixture of distorted English
learnt from her mother (who had a speech defect as the result of a
series of strokes) and words remembered from a private language spoken
with her twin. The question they have to resolve is whether Nell should
be committed to a mental institution or allowed to continue her life in
the woods. In order to do so, they find that they need to learn how to
communicate with her.
The most outstanding feature of the film is Jodie Foster's performance
in the title role- a remarkable one even by the standards of this
talented actress. Throughout the film Foster speaks only in Nell's
unearthly-sounding private language, but is able to use this, together
with gestures and facial expressions, to convey a full range of
emotions. The nearest parallel is probably Marlee Matlin's equally
remarkable performance in 'Children of a Lesser God', another film
about difficulties in communication. What emerges most powerfully here
is the traumatic nature of Nell's position- hitherto happy in her
limited world, she is suddenly confronted with a range of people and
situations she never knew existed. Foster certainly deserved her Oscar
nomination; whether she deserved to win I cannot say, as I have never
seen 'Blue Sky', the film for which Jessica Lange won the award.
At the heart of the film is a triangular relationship between Nell,
Jerry and Paula. Paula initially leans towards the view that Nell
belongs in an institution, and clashes with Jerry who takes the
opposite view, but as the film progresses she comes to share his
opinion and his concern for Nell. The two first become friends and then
fall in love, brought together by Nell, who forms the third side of the
triangle. One can say that there are also love-relationships between
Nell and Jerry and Nell and Paula, but because these relationships are
platonic rather than sexual in nature they serve to bring Jerry and
Paula together rather than divide them. This means that Jerry and Paula
play key roles in the film; fortunately, Liam Neeson and Natasha
Richardson both play their parts very well, although in a more
understated manner than Foster.
Many of the criticisms which have been made of the film are, I believe,
due to misconceptions. The film critic of The Guardian, for example,
criticised it for being overly politically correct in its treatment of
the 'mentally challenged'. Apart from the fact that that is an odd
criticism to find in a newspaper which is one of the strongest bastions
of political correctness in Britain, it is made quite clear in the film
that Nell is neither mentally ill nor mentally handicapped. She merely
speaks a different language (both literally and metaphorically) from
the rest of the world. Some have taken exception to the brief scenes of
nudity, but the purpose of these is not eroticism, but rather to
demonstrate Nell's innocence.
Another criticism which I have seen made of this film, both on this
board and elsewhere, is that it is pushing a trite or simplistic
'message', normally along the lines of 'nature is better than
civilization' or 'ignorance is bliss'. In my opinion, this criticism is
misconceived; 'Nell' is not a didactic film of that sort. Certainly,
Nell herself has many admirable characteristics- gentleness, the
ability to love and to be loved, a capacity for joy and a love of
nature- but nowhere in the film is there any argument that one has to
be ignorant or a feral child of nature in order to share these
characteristics. If there are villains in the film they are not
abstractions such as 'civilisation' or 'modern society', but rather
those individuals who want to exploit Nell for their own ends- the
journalist hungry for a scoop, the rowdy town youths who want to use
her either for mockery or for sexual pleasure, and the academic
Alexander Paley. Paley is keen to have Nell committed; he tries to
justify this as objective concern for her welfare, but his motives are
really self-seeking. He sees Nell as a first-class subject for research
which will bring him kudos in the world of academia.
What gives the film its power is not any obvious 'message' but its
deeply poetic and spiritual tone, deriving both from the acting of the
three central characters and the exquisite photography of the North
Carolina landscapes. It is a film from which different viewers will
draw different conclusions- some may see it, for example, as a
religious allegory about the redeeming power of love, while others may
view it in a more literal way. It may be too quiet and poetic for some
tastes, but in my view this is an unjustly neglected work, one of the
finest and most powerful films of the nineties. 10/10
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