Memoir of a Snail

The genuine cathartic effect of the film is achieved by an accumulation of smart choices, including the dryly witty narration, the ingenious visual surreal world building using kids’ crafts table materials, the strong voice cast (including vocal cameos from Eric Bana and Nick Cave) and an elegant classical-style score.

Elliot’s stop-motion work feels authentic and unglamorized in ways that we don’t often see in many mainstream animated movies.

It’s a gorgeous film, but it’s also an emotionally intelligent movie, one that shifts and flows between comedy and tragedy, reminding us that life can only be lived forwards.

For all the gloom, this is a lovely, heartfelt creation from the Oscar-winning animator.

In this charming, funny, tear-inducing, and instantly recognizable world, and through the (in)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.

It’s dazzling as handiwork and world-building, but more questionable if we scrutinize it as just as a work or piece of psychological realism, which it has aspirations of being.

Though crafted with wry care and a captivatingly scuzzy aesthetic, the bittersweet biography is so miserable that the “sweet” ends up as a cloying chaser to old escargot.

I was left stunned. I don't remember the last time I cried, and laughed so much at the film. Memoir of a Snail is quite possibly my new favorite animated film, and there are several reasons why. First of all the stock animation is very bleak, brown, and grey in the best possible sense. It's pretty in an unconventional way, and for the story, it is telling it works flawlessly. The usage of narration is the best I have seen in a film. The entire story is narrated with such care and precision. It's a mix of tragedy, and humor works every time. You could be crying in one scene, and laughing in the other. That is so hard to do, trust me, I have seen many films, and I rarely have that experience. The story is so rich with themes such as loneliness, loss, grief, trauma, cults, fetishes, homosexuality, etc... All of them are explored poignantly, feeling very personal, and lived through. It's at times an extremely depressing film, but behind the depression of it, the film is succeeding to be hopeful, and have an ultimately very positive outlook on life. I love some of the final lines of dialog that perfectly encapsulate this piece of work. I mean I could go on on and on about this film. Let's talk about the characters. Each of them felt so authentic, had its time to shine, and its place in the story. Even the moments that technically didn't add that much to the story were so charming and clever that you couldn't help but feel like they were needed. Like all the life adventures of an old lady, you could cut some things out and have more or less the same story, but why would you, when it's so good, so fun. Snails and their shell. It's a very modern problem for people to bubble themselves away from everyone else, to the point where there is nobody else around. I empathize with that problem myself, hence why this film was a very emotional journey for me. The film doesn't offer a simple solution, as great films usually don't, it rather shows you the life of a closed person, and her gradual, and slow-moving need to break from the shell. In the end, when that moment finally arrives, it's not all sunshine and rainbows, but it's a start. Honest, raw, emotionally truthful, funny, and empathetic, this film is a hidden gem of 2024. The best thing produced in it by a fine margin.

Hermosa e inspiradora película, aparte de un portento técnico. Terminé llorando al final.

With a pleasantly earnest story, clever visual gags, and innuendo that manages to be scandalizing kinky and perfectly sweet at the same time, there is much to like in ‘Memoir of a Snail’—just not enough to fill its 94-minute running time.

An unexpected yet powerful narrative on trauma, coping, and healing. The way the script takes us through the life of a snail obsessed girl is heartbreaking, but also somehow life-giving. If she has made it through so much pain... then perhaps we could too. CONTINUE READING ON LETTERBOXD: ****/8ED8j3

This is a bleak and often disturbing tale conveyed using a drab palette and intentionally unattractive art style.