"Nell, an underdeveloped human being has been subjected to a struggle of becoming assimilated and to conformity to society's views on how one should behave and act in public and in private"

This film features Jodie Foster as Nell, a young woman who lives the first thirty years of her life in a remote cabin in the isolated beauty of North Carolina's Smoky Mountains. Once she is discovered by the outer world, she is forced to conform to a civilized young woman. Her linguistics skills are very undeveloped; she is very underdeveloped emotionally, socially, morally, and intellectually. However, she has very well developed physical and motor skills because she has been forced to take care of herself. Nell's underdevelopment begins in her prenatal period and sprouts out into a series of problems there. The isolated environment which she lives in and lack of intellectual stimulation is a significant factor in her underdevelopment as well.

She was underdeveloped in the very beginning, when her father's sperm meets her mothers fertilized egg. The sheriff of the community had pulled up a newspaper article, which was linked, to Nell's mother, which indicated she was raped. However, there was no concrete proof that Nell's mother was raped, it is very likely that Nell was conceived without consensual sexual intercourse. However, later on in the movie Nell discusses why she does not go outside during the day because her mom told her about getting, "skew[ed] in the belly", meaning rape. There were no signs that Nell's mother consumed any form of substances that could have damaged the fetus of Nell. Nell was born with an identical twin that had died at a very young age. Nell has persistent reoccurring flashbacks throughout the movie of her belated twin