Guillermo del Toro loves to make lovable monsters. The Shape of Water features a love story between a webbed, gilled, bioluminescent merman and Eliza, a numinous mid-century mute, played by Sally Hawkins.
At one point, Eliza says of her merman-sel in distress, ““All that I am, all that I have ever been, brought me here to him.” You might say the same about Hawkins and this role. A tired cleaning lady, she begins to communicate and share food with this monstrous being and becomes lit with from within.
Del Toro constantly quotes and then inverts a lot of cultural and movie tropes as though to say, “We can leave these constraints behind and still have fun.” I feel as though if I talk too much about this film, I’ll ruin half the fun. See it for yourself and then come back and we’ll discuss it in the comments.
GREG, AVERT YOUR EYES.
Five Stars.
miltotto.com 
There is a lot to love about this movie. You don’t even have to like the story or be a fan of fantasy. The period attitudes toward sexuality and the treatment of women, the lovely acting across the board (I’m seriously routing for Richard Jenkins for supporting actor), the lush and fantastic look, gay politics, … This is the only interspecies love story that I can think of offhand, if you don’t count The Yearling or Lassie. But this definitely has sex. Eye opening sex. It’s probably not everyone’s cup of tea. It actually has a lot of political messages embedded in it, but none of them hit you over the head. I agree, it’s a beautiful movie and it is only diminished by trying to rank or compare it with stars. (Please tell me sometime the difference between a five and four star rating. On second thought, please don’t.)
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I agree with pretty much everything you say. There’s sex, but I didn’t find it especially prurient. The movie does deal with a lot issues, including gay issues, but it also didn’t seem at all preachy. It’s about our common search for connection wherever we find it. Other reviewers have referred to the interspecies thing and I find myself wanting to push back on that a little bit:
(A) There might be an interspecies thing going on here, but I’m not sure that there’s an actual interspecies thing going on here. Eliza is an orphan “found in a river” with those scars on her neck where gills might be. When sleeps, she dreams of living underwater. When she has sex, she wants to do that underwater too. Those choices by del Toro don’t seem accidental to me.
(B) If there is an actual interspecies thing going on, I don’t think that’s really the point. It’s about the search for love and connection. Eliza’s character is drawn in contrast to Giles and the cruelty that society visits on him as he searches for love and connection. The film is making a moral statement: Love Wins (Or Should Win).
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I saw it last night. Loved the acting, loved it stylistically…HATED the story. It’s everything I hate about Disney, all rolled up in a beautiful indie film with great actors. It’s a woman that isn’t conventionally beautiful that we’re supposed to agree can’t find love in this world. It’s asking us to be happy for this frail, vulnerable person while she falls in love with something that can (and does) kill her. (OK he doesn’t directly kill her, but still…).The object of her love/desire is not developed well enough for us to believe in that love. It’s asking for us to be ok with the only black actors being a). a cleaning lady and b). a deadbeat dad (ok that’s not Disney, that’s just tired old Hollywood.) It’s saying that the evil guy is purely evil, that’s there’s no nuance to his character. Nope, he’s a jackass to his kids, his wife, his peers. No depth. It’s saying in order for this woman to have love she has to give up everything. Oh, and die. And what about her friend? Are we supposed to think he’s gay because he reached for the pie shop guy’s hand? Nope. I’m not going to do that. I just wanted it to be different. I didn’t want Beauty and the Beast-type relationship dynamics topped with The Little Mermaid woman sacrifices-everything-to-have-love garbage with some racist cherries on top. The regular world has enough misogyny and racism for me, thanks.
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I don’t know how old you are, Emily, but I was surprised that Guillermo del Toro was capable of so accurately capturing the mood and sensibility and even look of the late 50s and early 60s. He is too young to have experenced that sensibility. Richard Jenkins’ gay character is particularly acute; it was like a flashback for me to see his representation, his understanding of how gay people thought and behaved then.
I used to read the far-left film journal Jump Cut back in the 70s, but it became a joke. You could always predict what every movie review would be. They were exactly the same, pointing out the sexist, racist, colonialist elements of every single movie released. What they didn’t understand is that we had already received that message. Those reviews weren’t telling us anything new and they offered no exemption or redemption or alternative, leaving us with only non-narrative Stan Brakhage abstract movies to watch (which I love and own, by the way) or Soviet or Maoist agrarian docu-pics with everyone in uniform, looking exactly alike, waving flags and paying homage to the collective’s shiny new tractor.
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I hear what you’re saying, but I guess I didn’t read it that way. Here’s Octavia Spencer being interviewed about the movie. I think she has some interesting things to say:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/octavia-spencer-on-the-shape-of-water-i-knew-it-would-be-magical/
Here’s an interview with a blogger that makes some of the things that she brings up in the CBS interview even more explicit:
https://blackgirlnerds.com/octavia-spencer-shape-of-water/
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