overrated, overrewarded

Rating: 6/10 (10 March 2018)

From the beginning, maybe even before entering the cinema hall or starting digital viewing, the convention should be understood and accepted. 'The Shape of Water' is a fairy tale, even if it is apparently placed in a reality that has existed 50 or 60 years ago in a well-defined place with somewhat recognizable landmarks in North America. Even the science-fiction pretext is no more than a framework, although much of the action takes place in a science research center filled with fantastic machines with intimidating tubes, and control cabinets with flashes after the last the rage of electronics technologies in the middle of the last century. But it is a fairy tale that is not recommended to children, an adult R-rated fairytale.
Director Guillermo del Toro was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 1964. His cinematic feature includes 'The Devil's Backbone' (2001) during the Civil War in Spain, 'Pan's Labyrinth' (2006), considered to date his best film , and films from the success of Hollywood's "Blade" and "Hellboy." Two are the common features of his films, which we also find in the "The Shape of Water". The first is the presence of monsters in an universe that does not have the same aesthetic rules with our universe all the time, and where what we find to be physical deformation does not, according to ordinary conventions, equate to moral or character. Some of his films, including him most recent ones, have as main theme the meeting people and monsters, and the possible connection between them, a theme inherited from Gothic literature and traditional fairy tales such as "The Beauty and the Beast" taken over by folk culture in movies and musicals. The second feature is the predilection for different and disadvantaged characters. Elisa Esposito's main "The Shape of Water" heroine is mute, her friends and partners in the story are a gay painter and an African-American colleague working hard alongside Elisa as a cleaning woman in a government institution. Their opposite, government agent Rachard Strickland is white, rich, racist, and sadistic - all vices embodied in one person, who also has a seemingly exemplary family life and a predilection for expensive cars. A stereotype you would say, but in the end, it's just a negative character in a fairy tale, is not it?
The main theme of the film is the possibility of love between species. The 'monster' is brought into a sealed container, is prisoner and the subject of cruel medical experiments, with the shape of a reptilian nightmare, captured somewhere in the jungles and swamps of South America. The cognitive curiosity of the 'monster' is due to its ability to adapt to water and (for a certain period of time) and air. The two parallel respiratory systems could be useful to the Americans but also to their Soviet competitors engaged in the race to conquer the cosmos. This is the end of the scientific pretext of the film, and there is no need for more. Between the two possible approaches, the incompatibility of humans and other species developed in series of movies such as "Alien" started by Ridley Scott in 1979 and the possible friendship (and even more) with which ET "Steven Spielberg responded in 1982, Guillermo del Toro clearly chooses the second option. He chooses and develops it because the connection between Elisa - fragile, weird, different in our world - and the monster who also likes hard-boiled eggs and jazz music evolves towards an impossible love affair with explicit erotic scenes, including a scene of inter-species sex with which spectators are aesthetically and emotionally tested.
Water plays an essential role in the visual universe created by Guillermo del Toro in this film. It represents the species barrier but also the environment in which the love story is consumed. It's a vehicle for comic sequences and the hero's rescue line. Cinematography and decors with their retro-quality and atmospheric atmosphere create a special aesthetic experience, from this point of view, "The Shape of Water" stands at the same level as films such as Martin Scorsese's "Hugo" or "The Grand Budapest Hotel" by Wes Anderson . I add to this the special acting of Sally Hawkins, an English actress underestimated so far, perhaps because she is not a standard beauty, her physique being better suited for comic or compositional roles. Here, however, she's a perfect fit to a role that she performs with sensitivity and ingenuity, giving credibility to the fantastic relationship between the character of Elisa and the 'monster'.
'The Shape of Water' is not a masterpiece. Fairy tales, even those for adults, have their limits. The 'monster' is pretty schematic, and as convincing is Elisa's Sally Hawkins, so little believable seems her attraction to the representative of the amphibian species. Concentration of politically-incorrect vices in the negative character makes it a boxing sack hard to accept, even for a negative character in a fairy tale. The message 'We are new monsters' seems a little rhetorical. This film wining the supreme Academy Award tells more about the state of the industry than about the film itself. But did not we say the same thing in the previous few years?