This bizarre tale of a snail-obsessed misfit might be the unlikely hit of the Oscars

It feels like everyone in the UK watched Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl, Nick Park’s heartfelt, hand-crafted Christmas gift to the nation. Cosy, comical but never condescending, this proudly provincial yarn of robot gnomes and narrowboat escapes was always going to be beloved in its home country. But Aardman’s belated sequel has also charmed the rest of the world via Netflix, culminating in an Oscar nomination for Best Animated Feature.

Standing in the way of a Wallace win is Pixar’s Inside Out 2, a literal emotional rollercoaster that became the runaway box office success story of 2024. As the 2 March, Oscars ceremony looms, the category will likely be framed as British gumption versus Hollywood gloss: a heavyweight slugfest between two former champs (Wallace & Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit won Best Animated Feature in 2006; the original Inside Out triumphed in 2016).

• The problem with UK’s film industry? It’s easier to win an Oscar if you went to private school
• An Elemental problem at the heart of Pixar

Which would be a shame, as the other three nominees in the category are soul-nourishing in their own ways. The Wild Robot and Flow are charming eco-fables that centre their stories on animals and wring moments of heart-stopping beauty out of their computer-generated imagery. Memoir of a Snail might be cast as the ugly duckling of the gang, with stop motion characters that look like the Rugrats gone wrong, inhabiting a grungy world where the colour palette ranges from ‘wizened turnip’ to ‘neglected tropical fish tank’.

It’s also a film that explores themes of depression, bullying, alcoholism, gaslighting, religious fanaticism… not one to dump the kids in front of when you just need some headspace to get through a to-do list. But Memoir of a Snail is a true labour of love from Australian film-maker Adam Elliot, who made the similarly eccentric Mary and Max in 2009, a story of two lonely, mismatched pen pals who find comfort in long-distance communication.

Things are a little more one-sided in Memoir of a Snail, as middle-aged misfit Grace (voiced by Sarah Snook from Succession in her native Aussie accent) recounts her hardscrabble life story to an attentive but mute garden snail. After their mother dies in childbirth, she and her twin brother grow up in near-poverty with a father who requires as much looking after as they do. A rapid series of misfortunes leaves Grace – already self-conscious about her cleft palate correction scars – isolated from her brother, alienated and adrift. 

After fixating on snails at an early age (hence her pervasive woolly hat with deely-bopper “eyes”) Grace also becomes an obsessive hoarder, her cramped house filling up with mollusc-themed tat and knick-knacks. It’s only when she meets crinkly eccentric Pinky (Jacki Weaver) – a former showgirl who has outlived two husbands and has a great story about John Denver – that she begins to come out of her shell, and even then there is more trauma to come. 

Sounds grim, right? But while Memoir of a Snail never shies away from the multitude of ways it is possible to be beaten down by life, it turns every snatched moment of Grace’s happiness – from her father’s love of jellybeans to riding a rickety rollercoaster – into something all the more precious. The fact that she is reflecting back her life adds a level of remove that helps find mordant humour among the tragedies. It is a carefully modulated performance from Snook, who teases out laughs while never underplaying Grace’s ground-down exhaustion.

Get the latest news and insight into how the Big Issue magazine is made by signing up for the Inside Big Issue newsletter

It helps that every character is crammed with wonderfully grotesque detail, from catastrophically wonky teeth to clammy rolls of Shar Pei wrinkles. It makes Tim Burton’s nominally gothic visions look as clean-cut as The Waltons. 

The obsessively constructed, unashamedly Australian backdrop is also as crammed with detail, in-jokes and cultural signifiers as Wallace & Gromit. You can feel the care and craft that went into making every one of the 7,000 props, from a snail-themed soap-on-a-rope to a bottle of Bailey’s Irish Cream. Nick Park himself would surely raise a mug of Yorkshire tea to all the crooked artistry on display.

It probably won’t win the Oscar. Academy voters are unlikely to appreciate the glimpse of The Two Ronnies on TV recreated lovingly in clay, or the brief sojourn to a swingers’ resort. But, like life, Memoir of a Snail does leave a mark. Hopefully we won’t have to wait another 15 years for Elliot’s next feature.

Do you have a story to tell or opinions to share about this? Get in touch and tell us more. Big Issue exists to give homeless and marginalised people the opportunity to earn an income. To support our work buy a copy of the magazine or get the app from the App Store or Google Play.