At both the Baftas on Sunday night and the Oscars next month, there’s a strong chance that the award for best animated feature will go to Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, an astonishing stop-motion animation that uses a beloved fairytale as a springboard for a deep dive into themes of death, fascism and Catholic guilt. Yet there’s another contender that has also been dazzling audiences with its ability to blend philosophical profundity with stop-motion whimsicality – a gently absurdist mockumentary about the inner life of a lonely shell who spends his days perambulating around an Airbnb, musing upon matters of life, the universe and everything.
“Life relentlessly goes on, and people get lost… and you continue to be alive, and you have to decide how to do that with some sort of grace and curiosity.” That’s how co-writer and actor Jenny Slate slyly described the moral of Marcel the Shell With Shoes On in a recent Guardian interview. She provides the voice of the film’s inch-high hero – a tiny carapace with scampering feet and a single eye, who film-maker Dean (played by director Dean Fleischer Camp) meets when he moves into temporary accommodation. Dean has recently split from his partner and needs a place to stay. As for Marcel, he’s been separated from his own family since the human couple who once owned this house broke up, leaving him with only his grandmother Nana Connie for company.
