Cast: Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer
Director: Guillermo Del Toro
Rating: 4 Stars (Out of 5)
She is a princess without voice. Elisa wakes up from behind an eye-mask, fills her bathtub, tosses eggs in water to boil them and then sets an egg-timer - to time herself - before she masturbates in the tub every day, a woman who knows the need to love herself. She is an orphan who cannot speak but can, when by herself, do some tap-dancing in the hallway. She is a heroine who likes her secrets.
Movie review: A still from The Shape Of Water (Courtesy: Instagram)
Things are not as whole in the world Del Toro draws. A fat man waits for a bus holding a big, frosted cake with a slice cut out, an illustrator fills his refrigerator with slices of once-bitten key lime pie, and a hand we often see has two fingers missing.
Elisa, as we know, cannot speak - though her smile can light up a room, or an ocean - and she is enchanted by an undersea god who eats cats and is smitten by eggs and record players. This creature doesn't know what she lacks, and instead provides her a secure stage, where she can lead him into dance, where she can twirl and dazzle and imagine breaking into song. In front of him, she is unafraid to be beautiful.
Not that dreams are easy. Elisa is immediately drawn to the creature the minute he is wheeled into the dodgy government laboratory she works in, but the world is more hostile. He is considered both dangerous and useful, a creature who could, if cut up and dissected, aid the Americans in the space race. Del Toro, never as subtle as he is subversive, makes the all-American a villain and lets a Soviet spy help the creature, but that is for later. For now here is Elisa, teasing her merman out of his water using vinyl records and tender sign-language. The word 'music,' for example, in her sign language is elegantly spelt out using both hands, like a casually played violin.
The magical Sally Hawkins plays Elisa, and the actress delivers the year's most stirring performance to create this measured yet fearless creature. She uses deliberate, delicate movements of her head and hands to convey all the meaning in the world, and she is as plucky as she is precise. He, played by the former contortionist Doug Jones, is a Del Toro favourite, a man nearly made of water who nevertheless manages to evoke love and longing. They may not say a word, but they fit together like the lines of a sonnet.
The reliably excellent Richard Jenkins plays Elisa's artistic, awestruck neighbour, and he too is far from whole, a man hiding age and sexual orientation behind a toupee. Michael Shannon is fearsome as the villain of the piece, a man who introduces himself to Elisa in the same breath as the one used to list the properties of his electric cattle prod, as if he was himself a weapon. Meanwhile, the flawless Michael Stuhlbarg - who has had an unbelievable year with Call Me By Your Name and The Post alongside this film - plays a scientist enamoured by the creature, looking at him artistically instead of clinically, as his job demands.
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