Animation is often seen as a genre for children, but that is because it is a genre for imagination. It’s a way of visually expressing stories that cannot be realistically or safely acted out. The stop-motion Memoir of a Snail, which has surprisingly won Best Film at this year’s London Film Festival, is emphatically not for children. Not even a little bit. It’s about one woman who has devoted her life to the concept of being a snail hiding in her shell. There’s rarely been a better movie about the torture of anxiety, but also in how, if you spend too much time dwelling on your fears, you can make them manifest.
The depressed Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook) is explaining her sad life story to a pet snail named Sylvia. Her mother died giving birth to her and her twin brother Gilbert (voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee). Their father, Percy (voiced by Dominique Pinon) loved them very much but was also an alcoholic paraplegic, meaning their home life in Melbourne was tough. Furthermore, Grace was born with a cleft lip, meaning she was viciously bullied in school. Gilbert was able to fight but poor Grace crumpled, every single time. If this trauma wasn’t enough: after Percy’s death social services separates the twins. Gilbert is sent to western Australia, to religious fundamentalists who run an apple farm on which all their children must work. Grace is sent to Canberra, to a couple who are nudists and swingers, which crumples her self-confidence further. The twins keep in touch by letter but it’s just an exchange of horrors. And then they grow up, when things get worse.
But over the years Grace does make one friend, the much older Pinky (voiced by Jacki Weaver). She is the kind of inspirational older woman movies adore as supporting characters: full of brio and charming life stories, and with little to do but provide emotional support to the lead. And boy does Grace ever need emotional support. She is so afraid of the world she copes by buying or shoplifting enough snail-themed tchotchkes to fill her entire home. A home she rarely leaves, even as she hates feeling imprisoned by choice. Her excuse is that without Gilbert the world doesn’t feel safe. Writer-director Adam Elliot has done something brave and unusual here in this depiction of how people can get stuck in a shame spiral, which makes the snail metaphor even more apparent. The straightforward attitude to life’s unhappinesses and disappointments as conveyed through Ms. Snook’s voiceover is refreshing – even as Grace feels sorry for herself, she knows that’s an ugly habit – but it’s a tough watch.
The physicality of the stop-motion animation, only occasionally enhanced by two-dimensional effects, really makes the feeling of being trapped vividly apparent. This must have been a depressing movie to work on. The visual tone, which is very nearly black-and-white, owes a great deal to Delicatessen by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who is thanked in the credits, and the use of Mr. Pinon makes that connection explicit. The way in which the animation handles its tougher subjects, such as Grace’s brief marriage to a neighbor named Ken (voiced by Tony Armstrong), makes them easy if not exactly pleasant to watch.
All of this does not make the movie sound appealing, which it is not. But it is good, and it is something new. Students of cinema might think of watching Memoir of a Snail like taking out a friend whose marriage has just exploded. You know it won’t be a good night, but in the long run you’ll be glad you did the right thing.
Memoir of a Snail recently played at the London Film Festival. It is now in limited theaters.
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