Film / Reviews

Review: The Shape of Water

By Robin Askew  Friday Feb 9, 2018

The Shape of Water (15)

USA 2017 123 mins  Dir: Guillermo del Toro Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, Michael Stuhlbarg, Octavia Spencer

Believe the hype: Guillermo del Toro’s best film since the brilliant Pan’s Labyrinth is at once a homage to the classic monster movies of his youth, a touching and tender inter-species love story, and a timely, unlaboured rebuke to the ascendant forces of intolerance and division. It’s also superbly acted, richly characterised, beautifully shot in a style that frequently recalls Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and occasionally very funny. There’s even an unexpected musical interlude. What more do you want?

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Just as Pan’s Labyrinth was set against the backdrop of Franco’s Spain, so del Toro and co-writer Vanessa Taylor (whose writing credits include Game of Thrones) make a point of locating this latest fantasy in the paranoid Cold War Baltimore of 1963. That it’s clearly intended as an adult fairy tale, disarming any plausibility objections, is underscored by Richard Jenkins’ opening voiceover introducing the story of “a princess without voice and the monster who tried to destroy it all”. Jenkins plays Giles, a repressed homosexual and something of an all-round sad sack who sports an ill-fitting toupee, lives with a bunch of cats and struggles to find work as an advertisement illustrator. The highlight of his day is when his lonely, mute Amelie-esque cleaner neighbour Elisa (Hawkins) joins him and they enjoy old musicals on TV together. She has her own daily routine (y’know, vigorous masturbation in the bath, hard-boiling eggs to take to work, and so on) and works at a secret government lab with her only other chum, Zelda (Spencer, with sass set to stun).

The lab has recently taken delivery of an “asset” (Jones, remarkably soulful within the confines of a prosthetic body suit), personally captured by Colonel Richard Strickland (Shannon) from an Amazonian river. Openly inspired by Universal’s Creature from the Black Lagoon, this striking, humanoid amphibian is considered an “affront” and a “filthy thing” by its captor, whose only interest is in extracting military advantage at the business end of a cattle prod. But while Strickland and his superior officers are eager to demonise and slaughter the semi-aquatic beast, boffin Dr. Robert Hoffstetler (Stuhlbarg) has another agenda.

Elisa’s developing relationship with the asset is superbly written and played, making this the most romantic, sensual and erotic human lady/fish-man love story you’ll ever see. (And yes, before you ask, the, ahem, mechanics are explained.) Subtly nuanced, wordless performances by Hawkins and del Toro’s longtime collaborator Jones (who played the equally other-worldly amphibian Abe Sapien in the Hellboy movies) bring real emotion to what is ostensibly a preposterous coupling between fellow outsiders unfazed by the species barrier, facilitated by sign language and a mutual love of music.

Nobody plays stern, unbending, relentlessly frowny authority figures with quite the rigour of the great Michael Shannon, here cast as a heartless villain so evil that he washes his hands before taking a piss, barely seems concerned when he loses a brace of fingers, and even fornicates with emotionless, mechanical efficiency. Indeed, each member of the supporting cast portrays a fully-rounded character, from Stuhlbarg’s complex scientist to Spencer’s irresistible motormouth, who fills Elisa’s silence with a constant stream of chatter about her husband, her dislike of short people (not in the satirical Randy Newman sense), and how she’s happy to mop up pee and poo but draws the line at blood.

It’s all magnificently shot by Dan Laustsen, working from a lovely blue/green colour palette, with terrific set design, breathtaking set-pieces and plenty of incidental detail and humour (check those seafood-scoffing Russians). Wisely, del Toro also leaves some aspects of the story open-ended, such as the asset’s acutal nature and the suggestion that the Amazonians were correct to worhsip him as a god. The lapsed Catholic director frequently toys with religious ideas and imagery and scatters several references throughout The Shape of Water for those who choose to look for them. Most pointedly perhaps, the ornate picture palace beneath Elisa’s apartment seems bent on commercial suicide by screening the minor 1960 Biblical fable of romance and redemption The Story of Ruth constantly to an empty auditorium. But however you choose to interpret it, this is one of those films you’ll yearn to see all over again immediately. If a better release comes our way in 2018, it’ll be a vintage year.

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