Memoir of a Snail review – charming, poignant tale of troubled twins

Sarah Snook and Kodi Smit-McPhee lend their voice talents to Adam Elliott’s ambitious animation that has a strong personal touch

Like Britain’s Nick Park at Aardman, Australian stop-motion film-maker Adam Elliott has shown a natural talent for screenwriting comedy – and for fusing that with the simplicity and directness of his animation style itself, creating a distinctive kind of lovability and pathos and importantly an instinct for the underdog and the outsider. He makes mainstream animation look a bit neurotypical. His 2003 short Harvie Krumpet was an Oscar winner, and Elliot has come to the Annecy animation film festival for the premiere of what’s probably his most ambitious feature-length work yet. It is charming and beguiling, with a strong new personal and even autobiographical strain and, as in the past, he has persuaded A-list voice talent to get involved.

Sarah Snook voices Grace Pudel, who as the story begins is a desperately lonely woman in middle age; she is a reclusive hoarder, surrounded by chaos and snail memorabilia. But she wasn’t always like this. The film introduces us to her life and especially her troubled childhood; and childhood, as her father sagely says, is like being drunk: everyone remembers what you did, except you. She is a twin and very close to her brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) who as a child was a pyromaniac, but only because he wanted to be a fire-breathing street entertainer on the romantic streets of Paris, inspired by their father who was … a stop-motion animator. When grim fate makes them orphans, a callous state system splits the two up, putting Grace and Gilbert on opposite sides of the vast Australian continent.

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