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.