MEMOIR OF A SNAIL

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Storyline (warning: spoilers)

Every single frame of Adam Elliot’s gorgeous, life-affirming Claymation feature Memoir of a Snail is handmade. Each shot bears the wonky, wonderful thumb-print of a human being. Every prop, sets and character is a tangible, miniature object, made by a team of Australian sculptors and artists (paid award rates) and brought to life in a painstaking 33-week stop motion shoot at Melbourne’s Dockland Studios.
Delightful, quirky, funny and emotionally satisfying, Memoir of a Snail is the life story of Grace Pudel (rhymes with ‘muddle’), born in Melbourne in the 1970s. Voiced by Sarah Snook, the adult Grace is an eccentric misfit obsessed with snails of every kind. She wears a knitted hat with eyes on stalks, and is herself a kind of snail, imprisoned in a shell of hoarding, loneliness and grief. We soon understand why as she flashes back to the beginning.
Grace narrates a life filled with loss and tragedy, starting with being born with a cleft palate, to a mother who dies in childbirth. But there are happy memories for Grace too, of a cosy childhood living with her adored twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a budding pyromaniac who protects her from the bullies that tease her about her lip scar.
When Dad dies and the twins are split up, Grace is sent to live in boring Canberra with nudist swingers and Gilbert is sent off to the wilds of West Australia, imprisoned by religious fundamentalist apple farmers. The loneliness and loss here are huge. But thankfully, just when you think you can’t stand the darkness and more brimming eyes, in swerves Grace’s new friend, the ancient and irrepressible Pinky, warmly voiced by a lisping Jacki Weaver. Pinky is the film’s shining co-star, an old lady with a larger-than-life history who brings colour and hilarity as she helps to crack open Grace’s shell.