Salty Water

Rating: 6/10 (17 February 2018)

Let it be awarded all the prizes in the world that people want to give it, but by the moment the Amazonian entity is taken out of the Pentagon-financed experimental hall, "The Shape of Water" loses much of its magic. It becomes an unnecessary brutal and violent actioner, with a touch of Hollywood silliness for good measure, as the singing-and-dancing parody of "Cheek to Cheek" -which by the way seems a more appropriate fantasy for Giles than Elisa. Greeks were not fools when they established the rules of tragedy: they avoided the display of gruesome details on the stage, not for aesthetic reasons, but because tragedies were neither lessons on anatomy nor autopsy tutorials. Gore sells, but in my opinion, it belongs to other kind of movies, and seems out of place in a fantasy like "The Shape of Water". I am thirteen years older than Guillermo del Toro, so I immediately recognized many of his faces, from Elana Eden in «The Story of Ruth» to Carmen Miranda, to describe the world of Elisa Esposito (wonderful Sally Hawkins, who merits all awards bestowed upon her). His references are also familiar to me, especially «Creature from the Black Lagoon» and its sequel «Revenge of the Creature», which precedes all those movies in which US military men and women want to get hold of all the E.T.s, Starmen and whatever weird but wonderful cross their way. For me what really counts is the love story, spiced with Cold War antics and military bullying, but even the romance goes over the top (for examples, in the second love-making scene, or the "Cheek to Cheek" parody) and it never recovers, since we all know the ending from the start, in the main title sequence. Production design is good, Alexander Desplat's music does not add anything to his prestige, and casting is adequate. Michael Shannon shines as usual. However Octavia Spencer, doing what is expected from her, has to deal with the stereotype of the fat and funny black woman that goes all the way back to the origins of the cinema of Los Angeles; and Richard Jenkins also plays the stereotype of the funny and old homosexual man. After watching it, I gave it four stars, then the day after it lost one... I do not think it will go any lower. It does not matter that a creature from sweet water, requires salt on its bathing tub. See it.