“It doesn’t all have to be Disney,” is animator Adam Elliot’s rallying cry. And in Memoir of a Snail, with jokes about masturbation and death, paedophilia, arson and murder, he proves it.
It’s refreshing and yet oddly familiar, as if Wallace and Gromit had been given a wipe down with a mucky cloth. But cute is the overriding impression, from the old-school ragged-edged stop-motion animation – Wallace and Gromit before Nick Park got the big bucks – to the characters on display.
The “snail” is actually a girl in a snail hat called Grace, one of two twins with her brother Gilbert, born with a cleft lip to a mother who died in childbirth. Her father is a one-time juggler and animator who became first a paraplegic after being hit by a car, and then an alcoholic when he couldn’t cope with the woe that had befallen him.
This is a tale predominantly of woe, and most of it falls on Grace, who recounts her life story in voiceover to Sylvia, her favourite snail, just one of a collection of weird things this weird but very likeable little girl hoards.
She withdraws, as snails do, and is happiest in her safe space. The death of her mother and eventually her father, plus the enforced separation from Gilbert and the relationship with the goon who feeds her up because he loves fat women means she has much to retreat from. But Grace’s salvation is her relationship with Pinky, a wrinkly old eccentric – playing ping pong with Fidel Castro and having sex in a plane with John Denver are just two of a catalogue of odd accomplishments – who teaches Grace the value of being daring. And gradually… drum roll for the metaphor… entices her out from her shell.
Grace is in many respects a stand-in for Elliot himself, and this is his story, give or take, the smalltown boy whose dad was indeed a retired circus performer and who started out making films based on friends and family. Early shorts include Uncle, Cousin and Brother, then along came Harvie Krumpet, also based on people he knew, and suddenly Elliot had won an Oscar for best short animation.
That was in 2003 and Elliot has made only two films in the interim, his first feature, 2009’s Mary and Max, was followed in 2015 by a black and white short, Ernie Biscuit, about a blind Parisian taxidermist.
Quirk can irk but it doesn’t with Elliot, partly because he’s unafraid to go into territory other animators shun. Partly because he keeps the show moving along at a fast pace so there’s no time for anything to stick in the throat. But also on account of the brilliant voice work here by Sarah Snook as Grace, a proper rounded character Snook invests with all the terrible longing a sad little girl (and later sad big girl) might have in a life that’s going wrong. As Pinky, Jacki Weaver also does great things without overdoing the eccentricity – Pinky is a feisty dame with a lot of fizz, even though she looks, in her words, like a testicle.
Apart from it not having all to be Disney, Elliot’s big point is that you have two choices in life: to build a life out of the wonky bits you’ve been dealt or to try and somehow “fix” everything and make it perfect.
On the one hand the family who foster Gilbert, Grace’s brother, Christians who find out he’s gay and subject him to conversion therapy. On the other the Japanese practice of kintsugi – which gets a fleeting and obviously metaphorical moment – in which broken pottery is put back together with much made of the cracks.
Self-help gets a mild twitting. Christians fare less well. Gilbert’s foster family of aggressive fundamentalists are awful. Non-christian, in fact, more Old Testament than the God of love and peace.
Love and peace is really what Elliot is selling, in many shades of brown and beige, in a style that owes something to Nick Park but also Sylvain Chomet but is largely its own incredibly quirky, touching and entertaining beast.
Memoir of a Snail – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2025
