“Shit cleaner” and “piss wiper” Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is speechless. Not just because she lost her voice box at a young age, but at the arrival of an amphibious creature more merman than maid whom she woos with a breakfast of hard-boiled eggs.

Dubbed “the most sensitive asset ever to be housed in this facility” – this facility being a secret government laboratory tasked with getting the edge over the pesky Ruskies during the Cold War – the creature, dragged from the Amazonian jungle where it was said to have been worshipped like a god, is prized for having two separate respiratory systems which are of interest to the Yanks in the Space Race.

Vivisect, instructs Colonel “I don’t fail, I deliver” Strickland (Michael Shannon). Study and learn from, implores Russian spy Dr Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg). Release, signs mute Elisa to her gobby colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and gay flatmate Giles (Richard Jenkins) both of whom reluctantly enlist on the grounds that “if we do nothing, neither are we [human]”.

Director Guillermo del Toro and his co-writer Vanessa Taylor have created a monster – hit, that is. For The Shape of Water is a beautiful exploration of what the opening narration describes as “a tale of love and loss and the monster who tried to destroy it all”.

The monster being Colonel Strickland, who beats what he calls “an affront” with an electrified truncheon. The harder he hits, the less pain he feels for the void that passes for his life. A void shared by the odd couple Elisa and Giles, the latter of whose advice to his younger self echoes John Betjeman’s regret for not having had enough sex: “take better care of your teeth and fuck a lot more”.

The void within Elisa, however, is tenfold. Mute since childhood, she pines for someone to shake the snow globe of her life that has all but frozen over with loneliness. And that someone is “the asset” (Doug Jones) who against all the odds returns her affection. “He doesn’t know what I lack or how I’m in incomplete,” she confides to Giles. “He sees me for what I am, as I am.” Cue Shirley Bassey!

Nominated for 13 Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay, and having already bagged a brace of Golden Globes including Best Original Score by Alexandre Desplat, The Shape of Water has made a big splash with critics and cinemagoers alike. And quite rightfully too, for it marks a bold, breathtaking and beautiful return to form by del Toro.

Director: Guillermo del Toro
Writers: Guillermo del Toro (screenplay by), Vanessa Taylor (screenplay by)
Stars: Sally Hawkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon
Peter Callaghan
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