Memoir of a Snail

It feels great to laugh straight after youve just welled up.

The characters in Memoir of a Snail, the new animated tale from Academy Award winner Adam Elliot, feel authentically real to us - and even though Elliot includes jokes, he doesnt joke ABOUT them.

He lays them bare to us with respect, and imbues his odd menagerie with well, with dignity. Which is a funny thing to say about something with plasticine eyeballs and glycerine tears.

Read our deeper dive into Memoir of a Snail at good.film: https://good.film/guide/theres-nothing-like-memoir-of-a-snail-just-try-not-to-cry

Australian animator and filmmaker Adam Elliots last full-length feature film was Mary and Max (2009). Memoir of a Snail is narrated and told from the point of view of Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook). Grace details her life story that finds humor and sentimentality in the face of depression, shortcomings, and letdowns.

There are two people in the world that Grace feels comfortable with: her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) and her best friend Pinky (Jacki Weaver). Their mother died during childbirth and their father is a drunk paraplegic who is a former street performer and animator from France. Grace developed the desire to be an animator while Gilbert wants to be a street performer.

After their father passes away, the twins are sepa...

When an elderly lady gives out her last breath, and yells something about potatoes, we realise that Grace is now on her own. Shes a middle aged woman wearing a knitted hat with two big eyes poking from stalks on the top. Shes what you might call a glass half empty sort of person, and as she releases her pet snail Sylvia from her jar into the vegetable garden she begins to regale us with the story of just how she, and her long-lost brother Gilbert grew up with their paraplegic dad; became orphaned, separated and then how she spent the rest of her life in increasing isolation making some rather unfortunate choices. Indeed, by an early age Grace is really only happy living in her room with her collection of gastropods. Theres a lovely melancho...