Coming out of Australia is a wonderful stop-motion animated film, one that’s sad, funny, and goes in surprising directions. Memoir of a Snail was written and directed by Adam Elliot which, I gather, is based on a degree of autobiography, especially the part about the heroine aspiring to become a stop-motion animator. Elliott, who coined the genre of “clayography,” won an Oscar for Best Animated Short 20 years ago for Harve Crumpet, although this is his first new feature since Mary and Max in 2009.
Telling the long arc not of a snail, but rather a young woman named Grace (voiced by Succession actress Sarah Snook), the film is dark and often heartbreaking but ends in a lovely payoff. It’s not really for kids, especially considering the plot points involving swingers, electroshock therapy and fat fetishism, not to mention bullying and child abuse. Set for wide release next week after a run on the festival circuit, Memoir of a Snail is the best animated film I've seen this year.
As the film opens, Grace and her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) lose their mother in childbirth, while their father, formerly a juggler, has become a paraplegic alcoholic. Later, they’re sent to foster homes on opposite sides of Australia, one of which is religious and abusive, and other the opposite of that. The relationship between the siblings, across that distance, is the film’s most powerful element. Grace later befriends Pinky (voiced by Jacki Weaver), an elderly woman with a colorful marital history, who offers kindness and encouragement. The snails refer to Grace’s lifelong obsession, which she inherited from the mother she never knew, and symbolizes something lovely that we nevertheless must let go of.
The film takes a risk in putting that much misery on the shoulder of its protagonist, and it probably wouldn’t be worth it if it didn’t all lead somewhere. But it does, and this is the sort of ending that’s going to leave a lot of people in tears. The animation is gorgeous, even if it’s just about the furthest thing possible from the slickness of Pixar or Illumination, although I could easily imagine either of them producing a movie called Memoir of a Snail, in which all of the characters are actual talking snails, that looks nothing like this. Elena Kats-Chernin provides an excellent musical score. The voice cast is full of Hollywood-famous Australians, like Snook, Smit-McPhee, Weaver, Eric Bana and even Nick Cave. Memoir of a Snail attempts something difficult and pulls it off.