Memoir Of A Snail

Alcoholism. Fetishism. Death. Aardman this certainly ain’t, but Adam Elliot’s film-festival-storming stop-motion animation proves more than capable of summoning big emotions through its clay creations. The characters of Memoir Of A Snail are more scuffed and visibly weighed down by the world, but the earnestness and vulnerability they carry throughout this sombre and occasionally darkly funny saga implores you to stick with them through the pain of it all.

Grace (Sarah Snook) — a collector of snails and owner of a cosy snail hat — is both the protagonist and narrator of the film, which, in biopic fashion, begins at the graveside of a beloved friend, before leaping right back to her birth in the ’70s. It’s an adroit vocal performance from Snook, who plays Grace with empathy that never crosses into over-sentimentality throughout a life marred by loss and loneliness. Grace’s mother dies while delivering her and her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee). While living in their family home in Melbourne, their loving father — an aspiring entertainer and alcoholic — dies while they’re still children. As orphans the twins can’t be housed together, which leads to more heartbreak when Grace is sent to live with neglectful swingers while Gilbert is thrown in with a cruel evangelical family.

From here, the film becomes about Grace’s fight to get back to her beloved brother while discovering who she is as an adult. Over the years that follow she develops a hoarding habit, gathers a vast cohort of guinea pigs, finds first love in a problematic neighbour, and makes a firm friend in Pinky (Jacki Weaver), a kooky pensioner with a wild and storied life behind her.

In fact, all the characters are wonderfully developed with their own tics and traits: while Pinky worked as a giant promotional pineapple in a supermarket and played ping-pong with Fidel Castro in her earlier years, bully-bashing Gilbert develops pyromaniac tendencies in his new foster home while coming to terms with his sexuality, and Grace’s boyfriend has a talent for mending broken pottery. These details peppered throughout the story never overcrowd the script, meaning that Elliot can dive deeper into knottier themes of childhood trauma and its lasting impact on self-worth, provide space for Grace to maintain a sense of hope, and work in a few stolen gags. It’s a rich, deeply moving narrative, albeit one told to a snail named after Sylvia Plath, with the filmmaker’s writing on a par with the skill and care behind Memoir Of A Snail’s craftsmanship.

That there isn’t a CG moment in the film makes it an all-too-rare gem.

Elliot also serves as production designer on the film, and populates his hero’s world with thousands of wonky, hand-crafted treasures to conjure magic out of the brown and sludgy shades of the film (Grace’s ample snail collection is at the heart of the film’s more enchanting scenes). Then there are the visuals of the characters themselves, oddly designed to endearing and distinct effect.

The eyes are large, egg-shaped, wrinkly, and capable of producing huge, globby tears. The hair comes in wiry shocks. The mouths are thin yet expressive. Grace’s face has a scar on her upper lip from a childhood cleft palate. That there isn’t a CG moment in the film makes it an all-too-rare gem, with the glossless, analogue animated style more mesmerising than stilted.

It’s been 16 years since Elliot’s last feature, the sepia-tinged pen-pal comedy-drama Mary And Max, was released, and while Memoir Of A Snail adopts the same style of animation and wrestles with similarly dour material (that earlier film saw Philip Seymour Hoffman voice a socially inept man who is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome), it also illustrates a clear love for his characters and a desire to celebrate their differences and eventually turn them into their strengths.

It’s this affection that reinforces the charm of the film and brings power to Grace’s uncompromisingly dark story. Haunting, eccentric yet full of heart, this is an animation that thrives on imperfection and stands triumphantly apart from its stop-motion peers.