Sally Hawkins stars as Eliza, a mute, lonely woman whose only close friend is the eccentric neighbour in the next apartment – Giles (Richard Jenkins), a gay commercial illustrator who, like Eliza, lives alone. Each day, Eliza wakes up, puts some eggs on the boil, has a bath, enthusiastically pleasures herself, and then heads off to work on the bus. Del Toro puts an incredible amount of detail into his fantasy worlds, and his heightened version of a late-50s America is a sumptuous thing all by itself. He gets at the cosy unreality of the period in all its nostalgia – the huge cars, the starry musicals and widescreen biblical epics playing at the cinema beneath Eliza’s apartment. But little by little, he lets the harshness cut through, like a blade jabbing through a warm blanket. As Eliza waits for a bus, in a street that looks like a backlot from a classic MGM musical, we see the Vietnam war play out on the television. When Giles goes to sit and swoon over the waiter he likes in an all-American diner, he’s disturbed to see his outburst of racism when a black couple come in and try to find a seat. There are dark little details throughout The Shape Of Water, and it isn’t difficult to see the parallels del Toro’s drawing here: the racism, homophobia and small-mindedness that made certain relationships a social taboo in 60s America. It was a wonderful age, the director seems to say, but only if you were lucky enough to be white, middle class and heterosexual. For their own reasons, Eliza, Giles, Zelda and the creature itself (superbly played by del Toro regular Doug Jones) are all shut out of the American dream offered up by shows like Happy Days or Mister Ed (the latter of which shows up on Giles’s TV screen at one point). In other words, del Toro cheerfully and entertainingly flips the norms of an American mid-20th century genre film on its head. Here, the marginalised and the downtrodden are the heroes, and activities once meant to induce shame are given free expression. Even today, racists, homophobes, misogynists, bullies of all types, want their targets to feel shame, to live with the idea that what they are makes them worthless. In Shape Of Water, del Toro actively celebrates otherness. Superbly acted by its diverse cast – Hawkins, in particular, is captivating in the lead – and made with evident care, The Shape Of Water is surely del Toro’s best film since Pan’s Labyrinth. His previous two films, Pacific Rim and Crimson Peak, were technically stunning hymns to Japanese kaiju movies and classic horror movies respectively. The Shape Of Water holds equal affection for the cornerstones of cinema, from Golden Age musicals to 50s B-movies; what makes this film special, though, is the tenderness of its storytelling and warmth of its characters. The Shape Of Water is out on the 14th February in UK cinemas.
