A snail-obsessed introvert struggles with loneliness, hoarding and personal tragedy in Adam Elliot’s bleak stop-motion epic. Here’s our Memoir Of A Snail review.
Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) is not one of life’s winners. Born with a cleft lip and the playground bullying that often comes with it, she spends a lonely, but contented childhood with her twin brother, Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and paraplegic, alcoholic father, Percy (Dominique Pinon). When circumstances find her separated from both and sent to live with a pair of swingers in Canberra, she copes about as well as you’d expect.
Australian stop-motion whizz Adam Elliot’s sophomore feature is an Aardman tale with the edges left rough. The Claymation style is thick, dirty and often borderline disturbing – more in line with the genre’s uncanny origins than the higher framerate aesthetic coming out of the medium’s biggest players. There are some classic visual gags and a fair share of silliness – but both are intercut by blood, tears and brutal depictions of depression and child abuse. Every character’s eyes slope upwards in the same sad little way, so even the biggest smiles are never far from breaking into chunky wet tears.
At times the relentless misery of the thing – even as we suspect it might be staggering towards a happy ending – feels a bit much to bear. Snook narrates in a sing-song lilt like a Tim Burton fairytale, the director’s influence shining through in Grace’s awkward isolation and the absurd suburbia she finds herself in. We follow her from cradle to middle-age like Big Fish written by Lemony Snicket.
But this is an outsider story for the 2020s, for good and for ill. Storybook stylings hide a character who feels anything but simple; her hoarding, snail obsession and the drudgery of misery that makes up much of her life paint a specific portrait of depression that’s frequently difficult to watch. Gone are the fantastical fables where gothic oddity keeps its themes buried deep – Memoir Of A Snail wears its broken heart on its sleeve, hitting us over the head with melancholia just as Grace is hit over and over again by the worst life can throw at her.
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So while the film feels undeniably authentic – Elliot has said the plot is loosely inspired by his own life – it won’t be for everyone. The most affecting stories usually throw some light in amongst the shade. In Memoir Of A Snail, though, any joy is seen through eyelids half-closed. There is light at the end of the tunnel; it’s just sometimes, it can be pretty difficult to see.
Memoir Of A Snail arrives in UK cinemas 14th February.
