The Shape Of Water — London Film Festival Review
The Shape Of Water is the kind of movie it’s impossible to imagine anyone but Guillermo del Toro making — a classic Hollywood-type romance meets comedic fantasy monster movie meets Cold War thriller, that finds the perfect middle ground between all three genres and proves itself to be not just a highlight of the year, but one of the best movies of Del Toro’s storied career.
Set in Baltimore sometime in the early 1960s, the film stars Sally Hawkins as Elisa, a mute woman who works as part of the janitorial staff for a government laboratory when they bring in a bizarre, amphibian figure only known as “The Asset” (Doug Jones, the master of acting under prosthetics, currently playing empath Saru in Star Trek: Discovery). The lonely Elisa forms a strange kinship with the monster, and plots to help it escape its confinement and brutal treatment.
As is par for the course with Del Toro features, the production and set design is utterly sublime. The locations draw you in completely, from the gloomy intimacy of Elisa’s apartment to the muted look of the laboratory, with many props (such as the tank The Asset is stored in) having a unique, somewhat otherworldly quality. But if you’ve seen any trailers you know the design of The Asset is the real star — it’s so much more than the humorous yet simplistic description of “fishboy” I’ve been using for the past few weeks, having some amphibian qualities but also looking totally unearthly, while still having enough expression to get across its more emotional and human qualities. In a career full of distinctive-looking movies, Del Toro has produced one of his most visually sumptuous films yet.
These locations are filled with actors who seemingly effortlessly sell what could have come off as B-movie schlock with the wrong performers. Sally Hawkins has long been one of the most underrated actresses in the business, but her entirely wordless performance as Elisa is something special, selling the character’s isolation, sexuality, curiosity, and romantic nature perfectly in every look and gesture. Jones has perhaps an even tougher job, finding the heart and humanity inside The Asset with limited CGI to enhance the creature, yet it couldn’t be easier to empathise with it at every moment.
Filling out the cast are a wealth of incredible supporting players, including personal fave Michael Shannon at his menacing best as the villainous colonel, Octavia Spencer as Elisa’s co-worker and friend, and Larry Gopnik himself Michael Stuhlbarg as a scientist with suspicious motives. These character’s aren’t merely treated as boring archetypes, either — we see many of their home lives and truly get a sense of what drives them, even though they’re not the focus. The effort Del Toro and co-writer Vanessa Taylor go to to flesh out these characters is admirable.
There are a handful of imperfections — the dialogue has the typical Del Toro issue of always feeling somewhat clunky, the structure is quite predictable, and one specific fantastical sequence might go a little too far — but these feel completely trivial in the grand scheme of things. For a movie to be simultaneously so weird and straight-faced yet constantly succeed in its endeavours feels like nothing short of a minor miracle. Only Del Toro, man. Jeez.
