Australian animator and filmmaker Adam Elliot’s last full-length feature film was Mary and Max (2009). Memoir of a Snail is narrated and told from the point of view of Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook). Grace details her life story that finds humor and sentimentality in the face of depression, shortcomings, and letdowns.
There are two people in the world that Grace feels comfortable with: her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and her best friend Pinky (Jacki Weaver). Their mother died during childbirth and their father is a drunk paraplegic who is a former street performer and animator from France. Grace developed the desire to be an animator while Gilbert wants to be a street performer.
After their father passes away, the twins are separated and put into foster homes in two separate states. They spend the majority of the film writing letters to one another and dreaming of the day that they can reunite.
As an adult, Grace meets Pinky. Pinky wears giant, red-rim glasses, is covered in wrinkles and liver spots, and habitually smokes cigars. She has traveled all over the world, met countless people, been with only a handful of memorable men, and has lived a crazy life full of no regrets or dull moments. She quickly becomes Grace’s best friend.
Grace becomes obsessed with snails at a young age. She keeps live ones as pets in a jar and buys every snail-related knickknack she can get her hands on. She also likes to read trashy romance novels and is constantly eating Chiko Rolls, which are spring rolls that are the size of burritos.
If you haven’t seen Mary and Max or his 2003 Academy Award-winning short Harvie Krumpet, Adam Elliot’s stop-motion animated style isn’t as smooth and polished as recent Laika or Aardman films have become. Elliot’s stop-motion still looks like it was hand-crafted by humans – visible balls of clay that have been molded into these soul-driven characters that we eventually grow to love.
It would have been extremely easy for Adam Elliot to make Memoir of a Snail into a film that emotionally destroys the audience and never looks back. However, the film is written in a way that makes you feel an entire spectrum of emotions over a mere 90 minutes.
Anyone who grew up as a loner will sympathize with Grace, especially when devoting your life to collecting something you love. But her story is presented in a way that allows you to laugh at all the terrible things in her life. The characters in the film, no matter how much screen time they’re given, are loaded with eccentricities.
There’s a bum who lost his job as a court judge because he liked to masturbate in court, the foster family Gilbert is sent to is a wildly religious one complete with gibberish prayers and apple worshipping, and Grace falls in love with a man in the neighborhood while he’s using his leaf blower.
Surprisingly, Memoir of a Snail is R-rated. There’s some mild vulgarity in there and repeated use of the middle finger, but there’s also a shocking amount of nudity. Grace’s foster family has this boring front of designing traffic lights. They create awards for her every week and hang them on her wall to get her to stop being sad about being separated from her brother. But they’re also swingers who like to take exotic vacations purely driven based on having sex with new people in a new place.
Memoir of a Snail is an animated film that is as enjoyable on an emotional level as a thought-provoking one. The film has several life lessons that stick with you afterward. Grace, Gilbert, and their father all wrestle with feeling caged in throughout the film, but the difference is who feels like a glass half full, a glass half empty, and just a glass.
Made on a rapid 32-week shooting schedule where animators had to complete 10 seconds a day to finish on time, Memoir of a Snail is a small-budget animated film that feels like a handmade labor of love.
It’s a film that honors weird people no matter how bizarre they may be. Next to its superb writing and ability to make you laugh while ripping your heartstrings to shreds, that is what makes it so beautiful and memorable.
