Memoir of a Snail - Review

There haven’t been many better years for the Best Animated Feature category at the Oscars. There’s the highest-grossing animated film at the time of release with Inside Out 2, a powerful crowd-pleaser with The Wild Robot, Aardman are in on the act with Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, and then there is technical innovation marvel Flow. The final film on the list is Memoir of A Snail. Another stop-motion film from Australian director Adam Elliot, known for a distinct visual style most notably in Mary and Max. This is not your classic animated film, rated 15 in the UK for strong sex references, nudity and domestic abuse.

However, the moments that send the film into that rating aren’t the draw of the film but almost a way to ground it as a film for adults. The film opens with Grace (Sarah Snook) a lonely hoarder, full of clutter which mostly revolves around her obsession with snails. From there, the film cuts back to her birth, which results in the death of her and her twin brother Gilbert’s (Kodi Smit-McPhee) mother, with the film bringing us all the way up to the present day in its runtime.

What unfolds before us is a bleak and deadpan retelling of Grace’s life, her struggles and why she is the way she is – all through the form of a story for one of her pet snails Sylvia. Showing Grace struggling growing up with a neglectful, alcoholic single father, she is isolated and without many role models to look up towards – matching the grey, almost washed out, industrious aesthetic that the film conveys. From there, the twins are separated with differing qualities of life, tackling religious cults or lonely visits to the local library. Indeed, the most compelling part of the film is an attempt to reunite again.

For anyone who has seen Mary and Max or any of Adam Elliot’s other works you will be familiar with his distinct visual style and claymation look. Memoir of a Snail is no different, it is a bleak aesthetic but one that works particularly well with this tragicomic world. It is a film that is sweet, downbeat, down in the dumps tone, with moments where you are laughing at awkward and hilariously dark moments.

However, where the film slumbers is in this very tone. Whilst Sarah Snook is great as Grace, the bleak and deadpan feel makes this a sludge to get through. Particularly with the constant narration that makes the film a little tiring and monotone. It feels like there is no progression in the narrative, slowing down its pacing.

Memoir of a Snail is a well-made and funny tragicomedy. A journey of Grace trying to come out of her shell and grow in confidence when she has been continually hurt by society. However, the use of narration makes the film feel quite downbeat meaning it moves at a pedestrian pace at times, like a car stuck in the mud, wheels spinning and no way out.