Guillermo del Toro is, without doubt, a film-maker of considerable talent. His canvas is visually unique, his imagination seemingly boundless and he’s made a handful of unforgettable fantasies. But there’s often a gap between what we want from his work and what we receive.
There was the disappointing creature feature Mimic, his studio-tampered English language debut, noisy but empty actioner Pacific Rim, the gothic nothingness of Crimson Peak and his silly small screen horror series The Strain. Not since 2006’s Pan’s Labyrinth have we seen him really find a way to coalesce his aesthetic sensibilities with his storytelling skills.
When talking about his latest film, The Shape of Water, del Toro claims that everything he’s done and everything he’s made has led him here, referring to it as his biography, his totality. For every fan who has grimaced through some of the well-intentioned stumbles, this is the well-earned reward. It’s everything one would want from a del Toro film: sumptuously designed, thrillingly constructed, passionately romantic. It has the ability to shock, amuse and astonish while also crafting the year’s most tender and unlikely romance.
It’s a paean to the outsider and no one speaks to that experience more than protagonist Eliza (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman living a mostly solitary life in early 1960s Baltimore. She spends her monotonous days cleaning at a high-security facility with chatty colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her spare time looking after depressive neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins). Like Eliza, they too linger on the outskirts, an African-American woman and a gay man living in a time when neither was fully accepted. But the repetition of Eliza’s life is upended when she begins an unlikely relationship with a new arrival at work: a sea creature.
For some, taking the considerable leap required to emotionally invest in an interspecies romance might be just a little too much of an ask, and del Toro certainly doesn’t hold back in order to make the film more accessible. There’s a brutal smattering of graphic violence as Eliza encounters dark forces and he includes an audacious, show-stopping sex scene between the central duo.
But there’s a humanity underpinning the fantastical plotting that pulls those willing to go with it into less murky waters. It’s an unabashedly sweet-natured love story, celebrating otherness as well as the patience and insight to look past easily ascribed labels. The ragtag group assembled are forced into a conflict with a villainous government agent, played by Michael Shannon, who is accepted by society because of his straight white masculinity, complete with nuclear family in tow. The more often vilified minorities are the heroes, unfiltered and stridently unusual, given the current regressive state of the US, there’s something quite rousing about such a reversal.
Del Toro’s confident grasp of storytelling is smoothly aided by sterling performances: from the subtle poignancy of Jenkins as a man who mournfully looks back on an unfulfilled past, to the impeccable work by Hawkins, who imbues a difficult role with longing, courage and sexuality. It’s easily the director’s finest work: untamed, strange, and beautiful. It’s quite astonishing how he’s managed to steer such a wild vision to the screen without interference. Few films this year have felt quite as perfectly realized.
