I hate snails but I love stop-motion animation. This Australian adult stop-motion animated tragicomedy focuses on one of the life forms I hate, but there’s nothing in the stop-motion animation that won me over. The plot, which is reportedly loosely based on the writer/director/producer Adam Elliot’s own life, sluggishly oozes around and left me bored.

The film centers on a fraternal twin, Grace Pudel (Sarah Snook as an adult and Charlotte Belsey as her younger iteration). Born with a cleft lip, she is defended in school by her twin brother Gilbert (Mason Litsos as the young Gilbert with Kodi Smit-McPhee as the adult Gilbert) from bullies. Their mother died during their childbirth. Their father Percy (Dominique Pinon) is a paraplegic alcoholic. Like her mother, Grace begins to collect snails. She eventually has surgery to repair her lip, but bad things happen continue to plague her and her brother.

Percy dies and the twins are sent to separate foster homes. Grace is raised by swingers Ian (Paul Capsis) and Narelle (Capsis) in Canberra. Gilbert lives on a farm with religious fundamentalist in Perth (Bernie Clifford voices the father). To give you an idea how far that is, according to Google Maps, Perth to Canberra is a 39-hour trip by car via the National Highway A1 (3,717 kilometers or 2,309 miles).  Los Angeles to Boston is 2,982 miles by car. Los Angeles to Pittsburgh is 2,426 miles. The action takes place in the 1970s, before the introduction of some of the newer train lines, especially the high-speed rails.

Grace doesn’t seem to suffer despite her foster parents’ swinger lifestyle. She does befriend an elderly woman, Pinky (Jacki Weaver), who has a positive attitude that helps Grace bear her problems. When Grace’s foster parents retire to a nudist colony, Pinky becomes Grace’s unofficial foster mother. As an adult, Grace finds love with a microwave repairman (Tony Armstrong). Grace’s marriage doesn’t go well and she will end up caring for Pinky.  You might wonder what is actually keeping Grace and her brother apart. That will be explained in the end although given the hard luck trajectory, the ending seemed contrived.

While this has been the darling of the festival circuit, this is definitely not for me and my husband also didn’t like it. The crude models used has a naive feel, but the story doesn’t make up or compliment this conceit. The story is repetitive and seems at points gratuitously leaning into a sexual leer. We’ve known for a while that cartoons can be made for adults so this isn’t particularly novel enough to raise eyebrows. The film is rated R “for sexual content, nudity and some violent content.” The narration seems endless and at times, all too necessary for a visual medium, in contrast with the wordless story of “Flow” which both my husband and I liked better and saw the same weekend.

My mind wandered so much I remembered a short story, “The Snail-Watcher,” by Patricia Highsmith while I was watching and also thought how a little salt would kill all those oozing snails.

“Memoir of a Snail” had it’s world premiere in June 2024 at the Annecy International Animation Festival, winning the Cristal Award for Feature Film. It was released by IFC Films on 25 October 2024 and will go into wider release in the US in November.