Mary and Max

DOWNBEAT, forlorn and resolutely sepia, it’s easy to see why this handsome claymation feature from Australia – winner of the 2009 Annecy Cristal animation award – had a hard time finding a willing distributor in this part of the world.

It's not that it isn't a commendable project. Mary and Maxwas five years in the making, and one can feel the love and attention to detail in every frame; the miniature wine glasses were hand-blown, the tiny costumes are correct to the smallest stitch and smudge. It's just that the film's audaciously dark sensibilities make it a difficult sell. Never mind the absence of Disney moments – even the scenes of "levity" are driven by Barry Humphries's dry narration and writer-director Adam Elliot's flair for gallows humour and grim dramatic ironies.

Maybe you just have to be Australian.

A tragic tale of a friendless Aussie girl and her older American pen-pal, Mary and Maxcoalesces into a detailed case study of clinical depression and Asperger's syndrome; listen closely and it's as if we can hear the pages of the Diagnostical and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders IVbeing turned over in the distance.

Between Mary’s alcoholic mother, indifferent father, and, later, a gay husband and abandoned career, her life is anything but charmed. But it is, at least, a richer existence than that enjoyed (if that’s the word) by Max, an overweight New Yorker on the autistic spectrum and Mary’s correspondent over some 20 years.

A lovely, endearing and occasionally discombobulating oddity, Mary and Maxis unlikely to be mistaken for the shenanigans of Wallace and Gromit.Indeed, its austerity can be overwhelming. Over 90 minutes, New York is always rendered in angry, noir monochrome; Oz, meanwhile, takes on earthy, jaundiced hues.

It takes some pretty affecting voicework from Philip Seymour Hoffman and Toni Collette, as well as some beautiful writing, to allow the picture to shine from beneath its oppressive palate.