Fantastic Fest Review: Memoir of a Snail

Australian stop-motion drama will draw you out of your shell

A snail doesn’t carry its home on its back. It carries a safe haven that is also a prison. So while Grace Pudel, the most passive protagonist of Australian stop-motion fable, may not have an a actual shell, she has retracted into her life like her favorite invertebrate.

Even though she wears a hat with eyes on antennae, day in and day out, Grace doesn’t look so much like a snail as a rock – dull, low to the ground, and immobile. Like her late mother, she loves those tiny creatures, and it’s to one of her crawling little pals that she recites her life story as she sits on a garden bench., which had its Texas premiere at Fantastic Fest.

The stop-motion format undoubtedly allows Elliot to ameliorate much of the sadness of Grace’s life with visual playfulness and ingenuity. That’s necessary, since the tragedies that engulf Grace’s life would break any flesh-and-blood human: orphaned, losing her twin brother, Gilbert , schoolyard bullying, adult betrayal, loneliness.

Yet all that growing isolation only builds the sympathy for Grace. Her name is subtly perfect for how she mostly handles the tough deals life often hands her, although there’s no element of religiosity to her. If anything, Elliot takes a potshot at evangelicals with Gilbert’s adoptive family, a bunch of mirthless weirdos running an orchard and speaking in tongues.

In this charming, funny, tear-inducing, and instantly recognizable world, and through the actions of Grace, Elliot tells a gentle, touching, bitter-but-ultimately-sweet fable with a warming message: It’s OK to leave your shell behind. Don’t worry, you’ll find out you’re not secretly a slug. You’ll just leave a glittery trail called your life.

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Fantastic Fest 2024 IFC Films Memoir Of A Snail

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