It feels great to laugh straight after you’ve just welled up. The characters in Memoir of a Snail, the new animated tale from Academy Award winner Adam Elliot, feel authentically real to us - and even though Elliot includes jokes, he doesn’t joke ABOUT them. He lays them bare to us with respect, and imbues his odd menagerie with… well, with dignity. Which is a funny thing to say about something with plasticine eyeballs and glycerine tears. Read our deeper dive into Memoir of a Snail at good.film: https://good.film/guide/theres-nothing-like-memoir-of-a-snail-just-try-not-to-cry

When an elderly lady gives out her last breath, and yells something about potatoes, we realise that “Grace” is now on her own. She’s a middle aged woman wearing a knitted hat with two big eyes poking from stalks on the top. She’s what you might call a glass half empty sort of person, and as she releases her pet snail “Sylvia” from her jar into the vegetable garden she begins to regale us with the story of just how she, and her long-lost brother “Gilbert” grew up with their paraplegic dad; became orphaned, separated and then how she spent the rest of her life in increasing isolation making some rather unfortunate choices. Indeed, by an early age “Grace” is really only happy living in her room with her collection of gastropods. There’s a lovely melancholy to this story and the dialogue is riddled with typically Australian epithets, sarcasm and very dry wit as the tale of woes upon woes upon more woes is engagingly unfolded over the next ninety minutes, but it’s the astonishing detail of the animation that really stands out here. Right from the beginning, as we tour a home that looks more like an old curiosity shop we see not just great detail amongst the mechanics of the imagery, but there’s plenty of more subtle content hidden in plain sight for us to spot and frequently raise a smile at, too. There’s an enjoyably compelling attraction from her downbeat monologues as she lurches from bad news to more bad news and I thought it had shades of the Tim Burton too it as it edged towards it’s denouement. It’s really superbly crafted artistry this, and though it does put a smiley face on things, it also takes quite a poignant look at family and loneliness too. This is really a film for a big screen if you get the chance, some of the facial expressions are every bit as human as anything people can do for real!