The Shape of Water – first look review

In his pre­vi­ous film, Crim­son Peak, direc­tor Guiller­mo del Toro pre­sent­ed beau­ti­ful char­ac­ters twist­ed by love. In The Shape of Water, soci­ety sees these char­ac­ters as sim­i­lar­ly twist­ed – but their love is beau­ti­ful. Indeed, it is shown so utter­ly with­out ugli­ness, so swollen with fairy tale puri­ty, that view­ers with prick­ly expe­ri­ences of love may find it hard to step into its sen­ti­men­tal heart.

Reams could be writ­ten about cin­e­matog­ra­ph­er Dan Laustsen’s per­pet­u­al­ly glid­ing cam­era, Paul D Austerberry’s green-tinged pro­duc­tion design, and the nether­world Dis­ney per­fec­tion of every set­ting from the din­er to the cin­e­ma to the auto­mo­bile own­er­ship. Del Toro has con­jured a vision as com­plete and per­fect­ly con­tained as a snow globe, with a lan­guorous pac­ing rem­i­nis­cent of Todd Haynes’ Car­ol.

Yet admir­ing a film’s craft is not the same as falling in love with it, although plea­sures are every­where, most espe­cial­ly in the per­for­mances. Sal­ly Hawkins has always been a charm­ing actor, able to chan­nel an open-heart­ed buoy­an­cy which cuts through wea­ri­er co-stars. Deprived of her voice to play mute char­la­dy Eliza, she weaponis­es every inch of her body. Each move­ment is mag­net­ic, be it climb­ing it into the bath for morn­ing mas­tur­ba­tion, or plac­ing a record on a turntable. Tiny yet sculpt­ed, she radi­ates a feel­ing not of this world.

Eliza lives above a cin­e­ma and spends most of her time off work with Giles (a deli­cious­ly rum­pled Richard Jenk­ins), a clos­et­ed gay man whose rich soul gives the film its tone. Giles’ open­ing voiceover describes Eliza – who had her vocal chords cut out as a baby – as ​“a princess with­out a voice.” His ado­ra­tion cen­tres her as a roman­tic hero­ine, with a lit­tle help from Alexan­dre Desplat’s euphor­ic score.

The man that cap­tures Eliza’s heart is part fish. He is tall, strong, big eyed and cov­ered head-to-foot in green scales. Maybe he’s a god but they call him The Asset (Doug Jones), and he is chained up at her place of work, the Occam Aero­space Research Cen­tre. Their courtship is con­veyed in the sim­plest short­hand pos­si­ble: they spend time togeth­er. He is a crea­ture who has been blud­geoned and blood­ied by his cap­tors and she teach­es him to trust.

The set­ting is Cold War-era Amer­i­ca, and while this informs the film’s height­ened peri­od aes­thet­ic, it is inci­den­tal to its arc. This tale is trans­fer­able to any place where the forces of bru­tal­i­ty are try­ing to crush what is small, ten­der and good, here per­son­i­fied by the secret­ly blos­som­ing rela­tion­ship between Elisa and her merman.

Rep­ping on behalf of bru­tal­i­ty is the best guy for the job: Michael Shan­non. As gov­ern­ment agent Strick­land he rules with a thick elec­tron­ic baton that often drips with blood. Elisa and her work-bud­dy Zel­da (Octavia Spencer) first encounter him when he strolls into the bath­room they are clean­ing and takes a reliev­ing piss. When he decides that it’s time to kill The Asset, Eliza and friends decide to stage a dar­ing kid­nap. They are aid­ed by a prin­ci­pled inside man named Doc­tor Hoff­stetler (Michael Stuhlbarg, doing heavy lift­ing like it’s noth­ing, as per).

There is so much to admire here, yet there is no sub­text to decode, noth­ing left to fig­ure out, only a spec­ta­cle to observe unfold­ing. The Shape of Water is a film that wears its heart on its sleeve. Its overt­ness, its acces­si­bil­i­ty, the trans­par­ent mean­ing of its abid­ing images, will sure­ly give it a longevi­ty. It is a sim­ple mes­sage piped into a com­plex world using fan­tas­tic tools. It’s a call to love.