Grace Pudel is a lonely girl who collects Caracoles. It is not the most popular person in school. His brother Gilbert is always attentive to protect her from thugs. As soon as he speaks, he has trouble making friends, he is a mother’s orphan and his father is an alcoholic. He also loves romantic novels and governs his day to day in relation to his particular routine, without great adventures, until his father dies. His death forces him to separate from his’ person, his only family: Gilbert. Distanced by hundreds of kilometers, which shorten writing letters, await with enthusiasm, yearning and anxiety to their reunion.
Harassment, exploitation, abuse, suicide attempt, drug addiction, fat Memoirs of a snail. Adam Elliot’s new and brilliant movie – director of the also prodigious Mary and Max (2009) – that, despite the absolute drama in which its protagonists are plunged; Its result is a beautiful portrait of life, family and acceptance. The feature film, which arrives this week at the Salas, is nominated for the Oscar for the best animated film.
Grace’s voice – which tells his experiences to little Silvia snail – is the one that guides this story that hurts and sneaks into the bones as it starts, with a Stop-motion Extremely care in which the features of each character are millimetrically measured so that it is impossible to remain impassive at their expressions. Not only those of the brothers, also those of Pinky, the old woman who manages to break all the schemes to the young Grace, and provide her vitality and disinhibition that she will learn to have as time passes together.
“In animation we have a lot of creative control and freedom. The characters may look like we want, exaggerate them. We can play gods, something that real action does not allow, ”explains its director Adam Elliot, who presented his jewel at the last San Sebastian Festival. “Animation is a very good means to tell history that really represent a challenge,” defends about the choice of this genre chosen to bring this fiction to the big screen. Precisely “challenging” is the typology of feature films that defends that it is worth being shot.
Adam Elliot has not been cut when pointing to religion, here represented through an extremist faction that decides to punish Gilbert to discover that he is gay. “I wanted to treat homophobia, just as there is an attempt at suicide, addiction, a lot Type of edge, ”he says. “I have seen a lot of animation that is very safe and predictable. I like to take risks, it’s good to do it. But well, you probably receive some death threat, ”he acknowledges.
The complex does not eradicate beauty
The filmmaker explains that he chose a snail to be Grace’s main company because it is “the best metaphor of his psychological state. When a snail you touch the antennas, and Grace is always being broadcast from life, getting into its shell. ” In addition, he valued that the spirals of his shells exemplify “the turns that life is giving” and that they are hermaphrodite beings: “They are neither males nor females, are rare, a bit extraterrestrial. There is something in them that seems fascinating. ”
Chosen the element, the following was to build a film that, despite its crudeness and fang, was extremely pretty. “The work of screenwriters and directors is to transfer the limits. Tell stories that are complex, but also strive for poetry and beauty, get a balance between light and darkness, comedy and tragedy, ”says the Australian artist.
“When I write I am very aware of trying to get those ups and downs. You can have a really dark, conflictive and distressing scene, but immediately move on to something light and spongy to get the public to forget. And that people get out of emotionally shattered cinema. Not in a shock state, but of exhaustion, ”he shares considering that it is an objective that writers pursue in the same way:” Everyone wants that when they arrive from the novel their readers feel that they have just experienced many different emotions. ”
The ‘danger’ of burning a church
MEMORIES OF A SCAKE It is hard, critical and strong in its portrait of religion, with all the dangers derived from fanaticism and here even exploitation by a family that converts the sermons into ruins collections of economic amounts up to the little ones. “When I was a child I had to give my pocket to the church every Sunday. My school was very religious, so at 18 I was already fed up. I found the religion very contradictory and full of hypocrisy, so I started reading about atheism, which is what I am now, ”he confirms.
The director explains that it is something that has been “completely” in his life. “In particular about the Catholic Church, I did not want to tell a story about it after all the horrors of pedophilia and cruelty that has been happening over the centuries,” he criticizes. As a solution, he chose to include “an organized religion, so the family that stays with Gilbert is a sect. They are very cruel and exploiters, like many religions. ”
“After burning a church and burning a crucifix, I will surely disturb many people, particularly in the United States,” he acknowledges conscious although, again, his position is immutable that directors must make “challenging” films: “Otherwise, They become bored. ”
The conductive thread of MEMORIES OF A SCAKE It is the first person story of its protagonist, which invites you to reflect on how we interact with our pass, and how much we can even modify them when we tell them. “The movie is memories. It’s Grace talking to a snail about herself, trying to understand why everything that has happened to her has happened. He feels sorry for herself, ”shares the filmmaker. In his sharing is how he finds the way to discover what he needs.
On her trip is Pinkky key, the old woman who pushes her to take control of her life. With her the film makes a clear claim of the elderly. “We all need to spend time with older people, with our grandparents, because they have lived a life, they have made mistakes, and they also have good advice to give you,” he recommends. Pinky completes the range of characters with which the film functions as a hug of those who last, squeeze and last when they end. Leaving a bright, immensely beautiful.
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