NELL
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1995 Scott Renshaw
Director: Michael Apted. Starring: Jodie Foster, Liam Neeson, Natasha Richardson. Screenplay: William Nicholson and Mark Handley.
The pre-release buzz over Jodie Foster's performance in NELL tells you two things about this year's Academy Awards race. First, it's another abysmal year for female leading roles when people can't think of any worthy nominees and start to hype a performance two months before anyone has seen it. Second, it's another year when overcoming a disability is virtually the express lane to a nomination. What it doesn't tell you is how good Foster actually is in NELL, and that is simply good, and far from great. NELL as a whole is even less successful, a well-acted but unremarkable film which makes a couple of profound missteps.
NELL opens in the remote woods of North Carolina, where a reclusive old woman is found dead by a delivery boy. When local doctor Jerry Lovell (Liam Neeson) is brought out to determine the cause of death, he discovers that the woman was not living alone. She has a daughter, called Nell (Jodie Foster), who has grown up completely isolated from civilization. She is also isolated by a unique language, partly the result of learning to speak from a mother who suffered a stroke. Jerry enlists the aid of psychologist Paula Olsen (Natasha Richardson) to determine whether or not Nell is competent to live alone. As the two doctors observe her, they begin to discover that she is far more than a "wild child," and to discover some things about themselves in the bargain.
Director Michael Apted has demonstrated an affinity for films set in the South (COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER) and films about culture clashes (THUNDERHEART), so he would seem like a good fit for NELL. Indeed, he is mostly on target. He and cinematographer Dante Spinotti (who collaborated on the visually imaginative BLINK earlier this year) create some marvelous images of the beautiful locations, in clear deep blues, and there are a few extremely effective scenes of Nell reacting to a strange new world. However, he makes at least one truly awful choice. Part of the mystery of NELL involves how her language cannot be attributed completely to her mother's aphasia, and other peculiar behaviors she exhibits. But Apted clues the audience in far too soon by using flashbackes from Nell's perspective, and consequently we are not given the chance to discover her secrets as Lovell and Olsen do.
The problem with NELL is deeper than that one error, however. Thematically, it's simply THE ELEPHANT MAN in a log cabin: "civilized people" discover "freak" and learn that "freak" is more human than any of the "civilized people." At times, NELL seems to match THE ELEPHANT MAN note for note, from the kindly doctor attempting to communicate with the outsider, at first assuming some kind of retardation, to the outsider being taunted and abused, to the outsider becoming a media sensation, and so on. Unfortunately, NELL is not nearly as subtle or engrossing as THE ELEPHANT MAN. The script, by William (SHADOWLANDS) Nicholson and Mark Handley from Handley's own play, would have been better as a mystery than as the morality play it becomes, but Apted's one false move robs it of that mystery. By the time we get to the climactic scene in which Nell delivers the kind of courtroom speech which makes courtroom scenes so generally annoying in contemporary films, she has become too much the noble savage and not nearly human enough.
Jodie Foster is a wonderful actress, but there's really only so much she can do with this part. Though it seems tailor-made for a heap of awards, Nell surprisingly fails to generate much emotional resonance. Physically, Foster does som superb acting; she lets this character inhabit her entire body. It just often seems as though she is concentrating so hard on her part that she's not making connections with the other actors. Liam Neeson and Natasha Richardson are both solid as the feuding doctors, but they come to parts which have the kind of pre-fabricated back stories that come out in tearful speeches, a frequent flaw of playwrights turned screenwriters. Their relationship feels contrived, which is a true shame considering Neeson and Richardson's real-life romance. That development is like a lot of NELL: awkward, even as it looks great.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 wild children: 5.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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