Movie Review: Memoirs of a Snail, a stop-motion conjurer, explores the shells we build around ourselves

This isn’t the usual one-shot movie where characters name pets after Sylvia Plath and read The Diary of Anne Frank — or when the story is inspired by a quote from existentialist thinker Søren Kierkegaard.

And it’s definitely not your typical one-shot movie where you cry as hard as the characters — in their case, huge drops of water from bulging, egg-shaped eyes so real you expect the screen to wet.

But these are just some of the unique things about Adam Elliot’s Memoirs of a Snail, a film that is as dizzying as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and exquisite physical detail using only clay, wire and paper and paint.

For one thing, Elliott’s film is not for children. So please note before you head to the multiplex with the family: This movie is rated R, as you’ll find out as soon as young Grace, voiced by Sarah Snook, tells us that she thinks masturbating is the right thing to do chew food Sex, nudity, drunk driving, fat fetish – as we said, it’s not for nothing.

But let’s start from the beginning. In his seventh “kleography” (for “clay” and “biography”), the Australian writer-director explores the process of collecting unwanted objects. Otherwise known as hoarding, it’s what weighs us down in ways we can’t see despite all the clutter. Elliott also claims that it helps us build constricting shells around ourselves — like snail shells, perhaps.

Our main character is Grace the Poodle, voiced by the brilliantly nimble Snook with uncanny warmth and plenty of compassion. We first meet Grace as a grown woman telling the story of her long single life to her pet garden snail Sylvia (named Plath) in a moment of deep sadness.

Then we return to childhood. Grace has a twin brother, Gilbert (Cody Smith-McPhee). Their mother dies during childbirth, leaving the twins with their father, a film animator. Grace needs surgery to fix her cleft palate, and the doctors ask young Gilbert to donate blood; he thinks that means he’ll have to die to let her live, and says yes anyway. (Those tears we mentioned? They start here.)

Two siblings live a sad life with their father, a life that becomes even sadder when a collision with a drunk driver leaves him paralyzed. Soon their father would die in his sleep, making them orphans. And no one needs a full set of twins, so Grace and Gilbert are forcibly separated and sent to opposite ends of Australia.

Grace is sent to Canberra, a city so boring and safe that people drive with helmets. And Gilbert is sent to a farm, to a cruel family of evangelists. They exchange letters and pray to meet again. Grace’s parents are swingers (it’s the 70s) and they abandoned her in a nudist colony. Her only companions are snails, which she loves like her mother, both live and decorative.

Five years later, Pinky appears. Voiced by longtime Australian star Jackie Weaver, the elderly woman has a past. She lost her finger while dancing in barce in Barcelona. She played ping-pong with Fidel Castro. She survived two husbands. Her friendship eases Grace’s sadness.

But there is still a deep pit where Brother Gilbert should be. Grace adds kleptomania to her “hobby list.” She’s also starting to hoard seriously. Finally, she meets Ken, a microwave repairman. She believes she has found love.

However, there are more cruel turns in life, and you won’t see them in this cleverly constructed – if frankly strange – scenario. But Elliott was here not only as a production writer, but also as a production designer, and his greatest achievement is the rich visual world, dominated by various shades of brown and populated by 7,000 hand-crafted objects. About 135,000 photos taken on 200 sets were used to create the film.

However, all this technical prowess would be for naught without an emotional core that resonates throughout. Elliot delivered the aforementioned Kierkegaard line (with only the tiniest of edits) to the wise Pinkie in her huge red glasses: “Life can only be understood backwards, but we must live it forwards,” she tells Grace. And snails, she adds, never go back. Neither should Grace—and neither should we.

Who would have thought that an R-rated clamshell movie could contain such a universal lesson?

Memoirs of a Snail, an IFC Films release, received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association “for sexual content, nudity and some violence. Running time: 94 min. Three stars out of four.