Written and directed by Adam Elliot, a bittersweet memoir of a melancholic woman called Grace Pudel – a hoarder of snails, romance novels, and guineapigs. Voiced by: Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, Dominique Pinon, Magda Szubanski and Nick Cave.
How do you come back after a fifteen year gap from having created what is possibly one of the best pieces of animation cinema ever made with your directorial debut? The amount of pressure that then puts on your follow up is incredible and yet, Adam Elliot knocks it out of the park. Memoir of a Snail is everything any fan of Mary and Max could possibly want. Elliot recaptures all of those offbeat, strange, awkward yet lovable qualities in this film.
Starting off with the design of the animation, it’s again delightfully odd and perfectly captures the ugliness of reality. It’s not trying to make things pretty and palatable, it celebrates the wobbly bits and imperfections that life is full of. Especially when the comedy of the script is so perfectly blended into the set design. There are so many instances of jokes and quick one-liners that are delivered by objects in the background, making it so the comedy never really stops.
The sense of humour of Memoir of a Snail is lovingly Australian, with a penchant for swearing and a fantastically blunt tone. Comedy isn’t typically a strong genre in this day and age, we get a lot of duds so it’s not very often you find a film that’s genuinely hilarious. One that makes you laugh from start to finish but that’s what you find with this film. Not only that but it has sincere emotion, Grace (Sarah Snook) goes through a hell of an ordeal throughout this film and you’re with her every step of the way, because she’s a fantastic storyteller and incredibly sympathetic.
Snook gives us a simpleness to Grace, she’s smart but naïve, she lives within her own little world and is surprisingly soft given the repeated hardships that life has thrown at her. You can’t help but to like her as she so openly shows us all flaws. She’s even better when paired with Jacki Weaver’s Pinky, an iconic character who is eccentric in the best of ways. You can never go wrong with Weaver and yet again she’s excellent here, injecting an outrageous amount of personality into this character, who is a genuine joy.
Whereas Kodi Smit-McPhee’s Gilbert goes on an unexpectedly harrowing journey, but not all that surprising given how great Elliot is at blending comedy with a harsh, depressive reality. Smit-McPhee gives us the embodiment of that with this character, there’s a lot of sadness and pain which actually strengthens the sense of humour. It’s an acknowledgement of how terrible life can be while trying to find hope. Putting all these characters together to bring such a wide variety of emotion gives Memoir of a Snail both a gigantic heart and a frank honesty, that are ridiculously and oddly charming.
Memoir of a Snail is hilarious, touching and surprisingly meaningful, it has a crude sense of humour with a dark edge but there’s also some interesting life lessons to be found. Simply put, Adam Elliot does it again, this is the perfect companion piece to Mary and Max, it recreates that superb animation style and all of those same wonderfully, nakedly human qualities. It’s an exceptional piece of animation that is endearing yet messy, it’s unique and both a fantastic time and a moving story of resilience. It’s one that as soon as the credits roll, you can’t wait to see it again and find all the other extra little details you might have missed.
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