“Memories of a Snail”, his discreet life

Published on January 15, 2025 at 10:35 p.m. / Modified on January 16, 2025 at 00:10.

2 mins. reading

Once upon a time, Grace and Gilbert, Australian twins sharing the motto “two souls but one heart”, whose destiny was strewn with tragic twists of fate. After their mother dies in childbirth, their acrobat father, who sank into alcoholism after an accident that left him paraplegic, dies in turn. Since no one wants twins, Grace and Gilbert are separated by social services. And while the first is adopted by a sympathetic libertine couple who hardly pays attention to her, the second ends up in the depths of the bush within a family of religious fanatics. Grace inherited from her mother a passion for snails, and this is what will save her from a heavy loneliness while pushing her to also create a shell to escape from the violence of the world.

Fifteen years later Mary and Maxabout the improbable epistolary relationship between a marginal Australian girl and an autistic forty-year-old New Yorker, here is finally Adam Elliot’s second volume-animated feature film. Winner last year of the Cristal for best film at the Annecy International Animation Festival, an award already obtained by Mary and Max, Memoirs of a snail is a tale once again tackling serious subjects, but imbued with a poetry and humanity paradoxically exacerbated by the use of plasticine characters.

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