Film: Mary and Max (IFC Films 2010)

Writer/Director: Adam Elliot

Cast: Toni Collette, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Barry Humphries, Eric Bana, Bethany Whitmore, Reneé Geyer

“God gave us our relatives; thank God we can choose our friends.”

Ethel Watts Mumford

“Her mother had told her that she was an ‘accident.’ How could someone be an accident? Grandpoppy Ralph had told her that babies were deliberate, and found by dads at the bottom of their beer.”

From Mary and Max

Eight-year-old Mary Daisy Dinkle likes to shrink potato chip bags in the oven to make trinkets. She has a pet rooster named Ethel. Her father works in a tea bag factory, attaching the strings to the bags. Mary’s mom, Vera Dinkle, is a frowzy, kleptomaniac drunk whose great scarlet lips are among the few oases of colour in this faded taupe Claymation world. (read more)