Guillermo del Toro presents a cold war parable, Beauty and the Beast by way of Creature from the Black Lagoon. While figuratively this is a movie about social outcasts who find each other, literally it is a film about crypto zoological bestially. So....
Set in Baltimore in 1962 Sally Hawkins plays a mute janitor at a government research facility who falls in love with a fishman (Doug Jones) a government agent (Michael Shannon, playing the kind of tightly wound bureaucrat he excels at) brought in from South America. With the help of her friend from work (Octavia Spencer), her gay neighbor (Richard Jenkins) and a scientist of questionable motives (Michael Stuhlbarg) Hawkins' Elisa Esposito helps the creature escape with the intent of hiding him until they can release him safely into the sea.
With an excellent cast and beautifully evocative sets, love the apartments above the old theater, The Shape of Water is an expertly made film, which by its very nature you still have question a bit. The film has a fanciful air about it even among its gritty surroundings, you can almost feel the layer of slime on things, and I'm not just talking about the creature. It's almost unexpectedly punctuated by sequences of extreme violence, even torture, and has nudity in it which I was not expecting. The film has all the markings of a labor of love for its director, and the performances, particularly Jenkins are impressive. Certainly not for all tastes, what its attempting seems admirable, and sometimes it succeeds, though its lessons and its politics are often muddled and simplistic, in both good and bad ways. ***1/2
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