MEMOIR OF A SNAIL
FIVE STARS Grace has lost her Mum, her Dad, her twin brother and her best friend. There's only Syliva the snail left to hear the story. #MEMOIROFASNAIL
Starring Sarah Snook, Jackie Weaver
In Australia’s Safest (code for boring) City, Canberra resident, melancholy introvert and snail fan Grace Pudel (voiced by Sarah Snook) is beset by tragedy. Orphaned as a child, bullied at school, ignored through puberty, separated from her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and sent into foster care (with caring nudists), Grace has retreated deep (pun intended) into her shell.
This might not sound like material for an animated comedy, ok, tragi-comedy, but in the hands of Academy Award-winning director Adam Elliot (MARY AND MAX), MEMOIR OF A SNAIL is an absolute, tear-jerking, laugh-out-loud treat. He’s a master of salty-gallows humour, and this utterly compelling ‘clayography’ (his term) is as funny as it is heart-wrenching, usually all at once.
Like all good stories, MEMOIR starts at the end and, as told to Grace’s pet snail Sylvia (after Path), embarks on a big, long loop through the past to explain the present. Along the way we learn that the only consolation to Grace’s drab existence in Canberra is her friendship with an eccentric old lady called Pinky (Jacki Weaver) and the hope that she will be reunited with Gilbert. Parting the clouds of her depression are treasured moments of happiness, memories she keeps safe along with her suffocating clutter of snail memorabilia.
To fill the void, Grace hoards. She collects feelings and memories, books and snail-related miscellanea but it can’t keep the demons at bay. A post-puberty relationship with bad sort Ken - she looses her virginity but gains a man intent on shaping her into his plus-sized fantasy - doesn’t help. Throughout there are letters from Gilbert, hope that they’ll see each other once again and beyond that, Pinky. This is her lifeline and thanks to the delicious voice work of National Treasure Weaver, Pinky is ours too as she brings sunshine, lightness and a sense of relief to the sadness.
Less Aardman and more Jeune et Caro, Elliot is one of the most distinctive voices currently working in animation. He’s a visual storyteller who harnesses colour and texture in the most unexpected and emotionally charged ways. Consider the lifetime of adventure etched into Pinky’s face (she lost a finger to a ceiling fan in Barcelona and once worked in a topless bar called Schnitz-n-Tits). Or brash minor characters like the budding swingers, the religious fanatics, the homeless former magistrate who was debarred for masturbating in court. Or Elliot’s expressive use of muddy browns, sullen greys and defeated reds. No one else does this like Elliot and his work is so much more powerful, more relatable, for it.
He understands that not all stories - especially animated stories - have to be relentlessly chipper. The world’s not a chipper place and he leverages this understanding to bring meaning to the simple, work-a-day sweetness that underpins the apparent bleakness of Grace’s story. Elena Kats-Chernin’s exquisite score supports that and brings a quiet dignity to Grace’s fortitude.
MEMOIR OF A SNAIL is not a conventional tale but it is an exceptional one. Elliot’s films are not, on first blush, easy to love. They don’t have the rainbow quality of Pixar and frequently lean into the grotesque, but they’re also infused with a delightful sense of mischief, a quirky charm and an underlying warmth and resilience that will, I assure you, overwhelm in the most positive way.
All that from some clay, wire, paper and paint (there’s not a single frame of CGI to be seen), and it simply couldn’t be more real.
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