Mem­oir of a Snail – a stop-motion mar­vel with a dark heart

It’s hard to recall a film which oscil­lates so vio­lent­ly between the extremes of maudlin and sen­ti­men­tal­i­ty than Adam Elliot’s stop-motion mar­vel, Mem­oir of a Snail, which took the direc­tor and his team eight years to devel­op and pro­duce. It is a sto­ry nar­rat­ed by Grace Pudel (beau­ti­ful­ly voiced by Sarah Snook), a latchkey lon­er brought up in 1970s Mel­bourne with her dan­ger­ous­ly asth­mat­ic street enter­tain­er father and lov­able pyro­ma­ni­ac twin broth­er, Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee). Ear­ly in life, Grace becomes sud­den­ly fix­at­ed with snails: their slow pace of life; their mem­oir-like slime trails; and the fact that they have the abil­i­ty to hide them­selves away from the world at a moment’s notice.

There’s a sense that Elliot uses the kind­ly Grace as a bit of a (clay) human pin cush­ion, dol­ing out trau­ma, abuse and sor­row in wor­ry­ing­ly grand por­tions and fram­ing the char­ac­ter as lit­tle more than a one-woman pity par­ty. The process of watch­ing the film often feels like you’re con­stant­ly being forced to ask your­self, ​“How could things pos­si­bly get worse for plucky Grace?” and then they do. The film doesn’t shy away from the fact that life does often take dark turns, and it def­i­nite­ly gets points for mak­ing each new dis­mal twist feel authen­tic with­in the world of the film. Yet when we plumb the maudlin depths once more, there’s always a lit­tle sen­ti­men­tal grace note to help leav­en the mix.

As the title sug­gests, the film adopts an episod­ic, mem­oir-like struc­ture, and the sto­ry com­pris­es sketch­es, anec­dotes and sub-plots in flesh­ing out Grace’s life. A sud­den switch-up in the fam­i­ly leads Gilbert and Grace into fos­ter care: him with a fam­i­ly of right-wing Chris­t­ian zealots on an apple farm; her with a pair of swingers who are far more inter­est­ed in key par­ties and cou­ples cruis­es to help with (or even notice) her depres­sive despair. The film play­ful­ly cri­tiques these self-serv­ing lifestyles, from the former’s ultra-oppres­sive qual­i­ties to the latter’s lenien­cy, and it seri­ous­ly ques­tions why some peo­ple are real­ly not fit or moti­vat­ed to raise kids.

On an aes­thet­ic lev­el, it’s a point­ed­ly ugly film, with all the human char­ac­ters made to look like grotesque car­i­ca­tures. And that’s not a crit­i­cism: this rejec­tion of ephemer­al beau­ty is absolute­ly in keep­ing with the film’s view of the world as an ugly place full of ugly peo­ple. While that may sound cyn­i­cal, there are rays of hope that come from sur­pris­ing sources, most notably the daffy, cig­ar-smok­ing eccen­tric Pinky (Jack­ie Weaver) an ex-table dancer and world trav­eller who brings Grace under her wing to help with her elder­ly care­giv­er charity.

Elliot and his team deserve praise for mak­ing a stop-motion film that doesn’t lean on the usu­al array of snap-talk­ing crit­ters and easy-on-the-eye visu­al won­der­ment, and Mem­oir of a Snail is cer­tain­ly a true orig­i­nal in its tone and exe­cu­tion. Yet its recourse to human suf­fer­ing as a way to jerk a view­er to react feels tire­some after a while, and it’s not helped by an end­ing which serves as a quick-fix band aid sug­gest­ing that sub­lime hap­pi­ness is just an unlike­ly plot twist away.