Memoir of a Snail is a sweet, lovingly-crafted, Australian stop-motion animated drama about a woman’s life. It is narrated by the protagonist (most of the dialogue is delivered via voiceover) and features a compelling mixture of amusing quirkiness and the unfortunate complications of life. There can be an unreal beauty to stop-motion when done right. So much thought and care has to be put into each frame due to the amount of painstaking detail that has to be put into every tiny movement of the little figures. Writer/director Adam Elliot has definitely done it right.
The style adds a lot to this story, allowing the audience to feel connected to Grace, as though she is opening the door to her memories. We experience her ups/downs, her joys and sorrows. The result is sad, funny, lovable and kind of touching. It’s the type of delicate movie that oftentimes gets lost this time of year amid the all-ages spectacles or awards bait. It deserves to get noticed.
As the story begins, Grace has just lost her best friend, Pinky. As she mourns her loss, she sits in Pinky’s garden and recounts her entire life to her beloved snail, Sylvia.
It is a tale full of loss and, even if Grace can’t see it, love. Her father passed away when she was young, causing her to be separated from her adoring brother by the foster system. Yet she has great memories of them both. She found companionship with a man who wasn’t who she thought he was, but he did make her feel good about herself for a while. She also had Pinky and her snails/collection of snail memorabilia. There was some happiness to ease the pain a bit.
Elliot paints all of this like nostalgia filtered through dreams (or nightmares). The characters are designed in a way that easily matches their personality. The good have a lightness to them, though Grace and her brother, Gilbert, have faces with the capacity to show a lot of pain and melancholy. Those who don’t have open hearts, such as Gilbert’s judgmental foster family, look menacing or just plain indifferent. The world fits Grace’s mood, so sometimes it is welcoming and others it is dark and hopeless. Despite there being nothing specific here that would be hard to replicate in live-action, Memoir of a Snail (89 minutes without the end credits) is a perfect fit for this style.
Animation in this country is generally assumed to be aimed at children. This is not a movie for kids. There is some sexual material and, as they say, adult themes. However, there is so much feeling oozing out of every aspect of this. Grace, with her omnipresent snail hat, is very endearing. Narration can come off like a crutch sometimes. Here it is another way into her mind and it also gives viewers the opportunity to pay extra attention to the visuals. They tell almost as much of the story as the voiceover.
The story itself is a simple journey through Grace’s life, with detours into her immediate family. Though Grace struggles with the deaths and terrible circumstances, Memoir of a Snail does not wallow in it. It empathizes with her, seeing the humor in the weird situations that pop up around her. I wouldn’t call it feel-good, there is too much unhappiness here for that, but it ends up being quite moving, with a strangely, yet satisfyingly, heartwarming conclusion. This is one to make an effort to seek out.
4 out of 5
Voice Cast:
Sarah Snook as Grace Pudel
Kodi Smith-McPhee as Gilbert Pudel
Jackie Weaver as Pinky
Written/Directed by Adam Elliot
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