Sleepwalking through a story

Rating: 5/10 (27 February 2018)

I like a good thoughtful, sensitive and even romantic film and that what I was expecting here, but the thing is absolutely skeletal. Del Toro makes it look great, but he simply does not do enough to truly tell the story. As a result, it comes off as being overly long and with a truly featherweight result. You can see the ending within the first thirty minutes and the rest is about waiting for it to be over. There is artistry in the look of the film, but the telling is utterly anemic. I can think of a dozen directors that could have done a better job. For an intelligent audience, this comes off as being a film that wishes it were intelligent but doesn't know how to pull that off.