Overview
After a series of misfortunes, a snail-collecting, melancholic misfit learns how to find confidence within herself amid the clutter of everyday life.
Our Take
Aside from Japan, there is no international country right now producing more adult animation content that matters than the country of Australia. It’s Australia that we can thank for the likes of some of the best in underground adult animation, be Michael Cusack, Josh O’Keefe, the entirety of Glitch Productions, and others who have just simply been hitting everyone with such a wave of quality TV shows and movies at a fraction of the cost of American-made, with the results being atmospheric.
Melbourne-Aussie-based animator Adam Elliot checks in as the only Academy Award winner for animation from Australia (for now) with his new clayographic endeavor Memoir of a Snail. The ninety-minute stop-motion animated feature is Adam’s second full-length and this one comes loaded with a stellar cast that includes the likes of Sarah Snook, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Jacki Weaver, and Eric Bana.
In a setting probably inspired by Elliot’s own experience of 1970’s Melbourne, our story follows that of a young girl named Grace Pudel(Snook) who is separated from her twin brother Gilbert (McPhee) after the death of their entire family and raised in a foster home. With her foster parents out-gallivanting about, Grace’s loneliness is largely comforted by her love of parapher-snalia, a word I made up to describe Grace’s love of snails and snail memorabilia. That said, it’s not like Grace doesn’t make friends along the way, be it her best friend Pinky (Weaver) her BBW-chasing husband Ken (Tony Armstrong), and the local magistrate James (Bana).
Even separated, Grace still manages to check in on her brother from time-to-time who seems to have just as much of a rough-go at it as she does in this game called life. At the behest of extreme Christianity, Gilbert’s own proclivities with love is the more on-the-money influence coming from Elliot of whom I’m sure had to battle his own sexual depression growing up in this time period.
Not always does the heart in a complex and arduous art production match up with the heart of the plot, but that wouldn’t be the case here. Adam Elliot’s brush is very much on display here, a dull-dreary setting flush with characters that you can’t help but fall in love with, even at their deepest and darkest. In a post-Trump elected world where people are crying and screaming and throwing temper tantrums on social media due to the result, Memoir of a Snail is an excellent take on Elliot’s pastiche of living life by the fullest and never giving up…never, ever, ever, giving up.
Not gonna lie though, kinda felt sorry for Ken. Homie just wanted his jelly rolls.