Adam Elliot's second feature-length film, Memoir of a Snail, is a bittersweet whirlwind of emotions through “clayography” -a term Elliot coined himself to describe his specific way of making clay animation to depict the biographical details of a person's life.

In Memoir of a Snail, the travails of Grace Pudel, voiced by Sara Snook, are laid bare. Grace is a lonely woman who finds solace in hoarding and hanging out with garden snails. Particularly, one snail she's named after Sylvia Plath, which, of course, should be your first clue about the film's exploration of isolation and melancholy. Life has been a tough nut to crack, especially since she was separated from her twin brother Gilbert (Kodi Smit-McPhee) after their alcoholic father passed away, and they were put in separate foster homes hundreds of miles away from each other.

As much as Elliot explores the condition of human despair, he equally wants to explore the lighter side of life. A sharp-witted, colourful script slices right through the bleak, monochromatic, almost sepia tone of the film.

To add to the humour, Memoir of a Snail also contains a whole lot of full-frontal nudity. A lot of it comes from Grace's foster family who are insatiable swingers, too busy booking their next nudist cruise to properly tend to Grace, who simply wants to hide from the world and curl up in her pretend snail shell.

Grace's only friend is a larger-than-life older lady and former table dancer called Pinky (Jacki Weaver), who becomes her de facto guardian, doling out the life lessons Grace needs to hear but can't hear until she's ready.

The tagline embodies the film well, “Life can only be understood backwards, but we have to live it forwards.” It's a quote by existentialist Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, who was deeply religious but critical of organised dogmatic religion, a point made abundantly clear in Gilbert's storyline. His foster family is an intolerant religious group who are convinced that any deviance from what they consider the righteous path makes you a heathen and worthy of punishment.

Memoir of a Snail gets knee-deep in the pure pain and loneliness felt through Grace and Gilbert. There's something nearly everyone can resonate with here too. There are themes of depression, addiction, ageing, loneliness, relationship betrayal, grief and loss. But despite these heavy subjects, it's the levity that Elliot brings which highlights the philosophy at the heart of this film: life is bloody hard, but it can also be good —very good if you let it be.

Memoir of a Snail screened at the London Film Festival 9 to 20 October 2024 and will release in cinemas in the UK & Ireland on 14th February 2025