[wpdevart_youtube]XFYWazblaUA[/wpdevart_youtube]
THE SHAPE OF WATER | FILM REVIEW
****
Dir: Guillermo Del Toro
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon
(15, 2hrs 3 mins)
Guillermo Del Toro, fantasy director extraordinaire, returns with his best work since Pan’s Labyrinth, with this Cold War-era fishy love story. Sally Hawkins plays a mute worker at a secretive government facility who makes contact with a new arrival, an amphibious creature heavily based on The Creature From the Black Lagoon, a Del Toro film favourite. The 1950s B- Movie apparently haunted Del Toro after he saw it as a child, where he was frustrated that the creature in that film did not get it together with the damsel played by Julie Adams.
No such shying away from interspecies romance and fornication here. Sally Hawkins is very much a sexual character, she is looking for love and also masturbating to an egg timer in the bath, and she finds a fellow soulmate in the captured creature. The creature is embodied by Doug Jones, a frequent creature collaborator with Del Toro; he was both the Faun and the hideous monster with eyes in his hands in Pan’s Labyrinth and another aquatic creature, Abe Sapien, for Del Toro in his Hellboy films. Here he imbues his creature with both romance and animalism, switching from a naive egg-eater to a god-like creature filled with rage.
It is testament to Del Toro’s storytelling skills that the communion between him and Hawkins’ eccentric cleaner is never questioned. Her new aquatic friend is however poorly treated by Michael Shannon’s government agent, with a vivisection on the cards. Shannon provides both scares and sympathy as his frustrated agent tries to live the American Dream but is crippled by his own notions of masculinity – what could be a one note villain is given far more depth by his performance. Hawkins hatches a plan to break her creature out with the help of gay neighbour Richard Jenkins, fellow worker Octavia Spencer and scientist with a secret Michael Stuhlbarg. In particular, Jenkins shines as a man hiding what he is in America, a conflicted helper to Hawkins’ romanticism. Even if they can get the creature out of his prison however, how can you keep it alive out of the water?
This is a wondrous fantasy, rooted in a Cold War reality as Russia and the USA compete over scientific innovation in the shadow of the space race. Told with deftness and with some jaw dropping moments, from a song-and-dance number, to a submerged house with swimming lovers, The Shape of Water is a glorious adult fantasy.
words KEIRON SELF
In cinemas now.
