Snails cannot move backward. As it turns out, forward movement is the only law of snail physics, and it is one that Grace Prudel avoids at all costs.
Grace is a misfit twin. She and her brother, Gilbert, lost their mother at birth. Grace’s mom was a malacologist, or, in Grace’s mind, a snail scientist. In a twisted sense of symmetry, Grace recounts how female snails must biologically die to successfully give birth.
From the moment her mother passes away, Grace has felt a connection to snails. In fact, apart from Gilbert, her pet snails are the only living things giving her life purpose.
Grace and Gilbert’s father, who had been an aspiring French street performer, sadly became a paraplegic due to a roadside car accident. He eventually passes away due to sleep apnea, which is a bitter example of Memoir of a Snail’s comedic tone.
Orphaned and separated from her brother in an unfortunate foster care decision, Grace ends up with a new set of parents more interested in joining a nudist colony than raising their foster daughter.
Moving through the badlands and suburbs of Australia, Grace ends up confined in her room, while Gilbert arrives at an apple farm that resembles a religious cult. Though they exist on separate sides of the Australian continent, Grace and Gilbert remain linked. Their story and hopeful reunion is recalled through future, older Grace’s narration, which is mainly focused on the cast of characters who wade in and out of her life.
Grace claims she’s an optimist—a perpetually glass half-full kind of girl. Yet as her glum disposition settles in, she becomes a hoarder, addicted to food, and reclusive to the point of sleeping entire weeks away with her snails and a local eccentric named Pinky as her only companions.
As Grace trudges through the doldrums of her life, she does her best to learn lessons from her snail friends. Admittedly, stop-motion animation provides an effective medium for the themes at play. Grace’s epiphanies arrive when she is patient, thoughtful, and measured. To face her life’s problems though, she’ll need to change who she is.
If only she could learn how to come out of her shell…
The center of Memoir is Grace’s eventual realization that she must learn to move forward with her life to overcome the grief of her past and the pain of her present. Grace maintains a strong connection to her brother despite their separation. She eventually befriends an elderly woman named Pinky, who becomes a mentor of sorts.
Before her father’s death, Grace recounts several happy and hopeful memories from her childhood involving amusement park trips, reading books at home, and getting to be a kid.
Despite their separation, Grace and Gilbert truly care for each other. They write letters, and they share a genuine sibling affection that helps them through tragedy and their own separation as they are forced to navigate life apart.
At the film’s conclusion, Grace has learned how to overcome her lifelong depression and addictions. She finds purpose in (as a snail would) moving forward in her life and pursuing a career in animated filmmaking.
After Gilbert is orphaned, he joins his new foster parents and siblings on an apple farm called “Garden of Eden.” His foster parents consider themselves pastors and are obsessed with their brand of hyper-Christianity. Grandiose and sardonic, these depictions are part of the film’s black comedy foundation.
There are scenes of speaking and praying tongues. Characters mention exorcism or removing Lucifer from one’s soul. At one point, Gilbert is sarcastically baptized when he refuses to obey his foster mother’s rules for behavior.
A short scene features a “gay away” exorcism in which several characters attempt a crude form of gay conversion therapy modeled on historical moments in religious circles.
In the family’s church, an apple is put at the center of the church, where typically we’d see a crucifix or a depiction of Jesus. The family worships the apple, and its obsession revolves around what the apple can provide. The foster family’s four sons are described as religiously “brainwashed.”
Even though Memoir of a Snail is barely 90 minutes long, it does not waste time undressing its stop motion characters.
Grace’s foster parents are swingers and nudists. Grace has barely arrived when they leave her at home to attend a swinger orgy in the dark. Then, they vacation on a nudist cruise. They finally abandon Grace altogether to live in a European nudist colony. Each of these scenes features male and female full frontal and rear nudity (in stop motion style).
In flashback, Grace recounts the former lifestyle of her eccentric friend, Pinky. These quick scenes reveal younger versions of Pinky as a stripper, having sex with lovers, and in her underwear. There is full frontal female nudity in these scenes.
A judge is disbarred for masturbating during a court trial. The moment occurs under a table, but it is clear what is happening in the scene.
Throughout her adolescence, Grace is consumed with the idea of losing her virginity. She is eventually charmed by a neighbor across the street. He initially treats her well and proposes to her after a few dates. They marry, but Grace quickly realizes that he has a more sinister plan: He has been taking nude photos of her for his personal scrapbook, which body shames Grace as she gains weight. These photos trigger a series of flashbacks in which Grace is entirely naked or partially unclothed as she realizes she’s been taken advantage of in her short marriage.
Two snails have sex in a jar. This is described as “hugging” and part of Grace’s early education on sex. As they hug, the snails and their fluids line the jar’s glass. Other animals and pets mime sexual actions as taunts toward characters.
Two young boys kiss behind a building. Another character sees them and punishes them for their homosexuality (See more in the Violent Content).
Two characters kiss in an alleyway. Several characters fantasize about kissing, holding hands, and hugging other characters. One character spies on another in a bathing suit by a pool through binoculars.
The film’s stop-motion animation style does little to soften the presence of gore and violence throughout Grace’s life.
Two former husbands of Pinky’s die in gruesome detail. One is stabbed through the chest with a kitchen knife; the other is eaten by a crocodile.
One character attempts suicide by consuming snail poison. This attempt is eventually stopped by the character after realizing their mistake.
A character loses a finger in a ceiling fan. The bloodied finger lands in a drink in the bar.
A character is trapped inside a burning building and believed to have died in the fire. His screams can be heard as he is burned.
As part of a punishment for sexual behavior, two characters are electrically shocked for several minutes with extreme depictions of the pain they feel. Other characters are forced to watch and hold down these two characters as they are punished.
A character’s tooth is punched out: The victim finds the tooth on the ground and inserts it back into his mouth. A character obsessed with fire repeatedly burns himself.
Multiple characters are beaten up during schoolyard bullying scenes. These moments come back to haunt other characters in nightmares later on in life.
Two misuses of the Lord’s name. Three uses of “d—head” and two uses of “s—.” Several uses of slurs such as “bugger” or “wanker.”
Multiple characters raise their middle fingers in direct view of other characters. This occurs around 10 times throughout the film.
There are derogatory references made about one character being a “homosexual.” Several characters are called “morons.”
Most, if not all, adult characters smoke cigarettes or cigars and consume various types of alcohol. Several characters are described or portrayed as alcoholics. One character exchanges confiscated tithe money for a bottle of whiskey.
There are references to marijuana being grown in one character’s home. One character tries to drug another by placing pills into a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich.
Someone is described as a kleptomaniac and is seen stealing from stores as they grow up. There are illustrations of crude anatomical drawings in books in a library.
Stop-motion animation style is notoriously tedious and painstaking. There is a requisite attention to detail and patience necessary for success in this mode of filmmaking.
When things go wrong behind the scenes, the director and team of animators need to create a new model of the character, place the adjusted props in the right place, and start rolling again.
Memoir of a Snail carries this theme throughout its runtime. Characters are broken, literally and figuratively. One character’s quintessential advice to Grace is that broken things can be put back together again. She urges Grace that it’s OK to celebrate your cracks, as long as you don’t let them stay that way.
There’s a general truth to these claims. Unfortunately, the source of hope and reason for moving forward in Grace’s dreary and bleak world fails to deliver lasting hope.
As you’ve surely guessed by now, Adam Elliot’s latest animated feature is not designed for kids. When its conclusion arrives, it’s clear that Memoir of a Snail’s themes and sense of morality might not even be well suited for adults either.
Memoir makes the case that we’ll see beauty in our brokenness one day, if only we grit our teeth, laugh at our pain, and live long enough to make it there. While this attempt at hope may be admirable, it remains misguided as the story seems more interested in portraying its characters in a violent and sexual light rather than a redemptive and fulfilling one.
Jackson Greer is a High School English Teacher in the suburbs of Texas. He lives in Coppell, Texas with his wife, Clara. They love debating whether or not to get another cat and reading poetry together. Also, he is a former employee of Focus on the Family’s Parenting Department.
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