Short listed for 2025’s Best Animated Feature Film Oscar is Memoir of a Snail, a stop motion film from writer-director Adam Elliot who already has an Oscar to his name for his 2004 animated short film, ‘Harvey Krumpet’. Playing like the far darker and grimy side of Wallace & Gromit’s world the film opens with the death of Pinky (voiced by Jackie Weaver) an elderly woman and best friend of the now middle aged Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook) a lonely recluse whose life has been a series of ups and downs but mostly downs. Her childhood saw her separated from her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) by social services after their mother died in childbirth followed by their paraplegic alcoholic dad who passed away while they were young. So whilst Gilbert is taken in by religious fundamentalists on one side of Australia, Grace is taken in by a pair of swingers on the other side of the country making this a film that will have parents covering their children’s eyes. The film is told mostly in Grace’s voiceover often reading from the letters she sends her brother.
Now this does sound unrelentingly grim but the title refers more to the metaphorical shell that both live in where their fears have kept them trapped rather than the pet mollusc grace has kept. And yet the metaphor of snails not being able to move backward applies equally to Grace & Gilbert’s lives. Both aspire to escape their past lives in what in what is a roller coaster of emotions. One moment the film will be melancholy to the point of tear jerking, the next its laugh out loud funny. It is packed with ideas and themes with the elderly yet always sprightly Pinky helping the pair to set themselves free from their shells.
Complimented by superb animation Memoir of a Snail is, like the best of films, multi layered. Ultimately uplifting and life affirming it is an extraordinary film.
related feature : Mads Mikkelsen, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner & Aaron Pierre on the Mufasa UK premiere red carpet
related feature : The ‘Chicken Run Dawn of the Nugget’ cast & director chat about the film …….
We had the pleasure to char with director Adam Elliot about the film….
Here’s the Memoir of a Snail trailer…….
