And the Academy bit the bait...

Rating: 7/10 (4 July 2019)

As a Best Picture winner, "The Shape of Water" is a most interesting choice, but I wonder if the Academy voted for the sci-fi spy thriller and its interspecies romance between the mute Eliza (Sally Hawkins) and the mysterious fish-man or the art-house movie channeling Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Alexandre Desplat whimsical Oscar-winning score à la "Up". I liked the content but there was something too bait-y on the surface to make me fully admire its merit.
Speaking of the Oscars, let me start with my first gut-reaction: I wish Michael Shannon was nominated instead of Richard Jenkins, he played the kind of villains that make the difference in a movie, I enjoyed every minute of his screen presence, as Head of Security Strickland, he was creepy, intimidating (he also made a terrific entrance) but there was something in his attitude that betrayed a deep, almost childish, desire to be a perfect citizen, a good soldier, who'd never disappoint his superiors... I figured he represented the infantilizing of American manhood through hardcore and blind patriotism, a way to show that no matter how strong and almighty men felt these days, they were still submissive.
Women are depicted as submissive but not as a choice, simply out of practicality in a still male-dominated America (those were the early 60s) but then they reveal themselves to be more dependable than men, it's interesting that the Octavia Spencer's character Zelda never betrays her friend, it's her husband, the guy who'd asked her to open the door who reveals himself as a coward. What I don't get though is whether Zelda was really going to let Strickland rip everything apart and not say a word, we'll never know, the film finds the perfect shortcut, the bad guy gets to Eliza but it's not Zelda's fault. It didn't make sense by the way that the husband wouldn't even let Zelda warn her friend... so I think the film had a little record to settle with men in general.
There are basically three good characters of male persuasion in the film: the fish-man, who's said to have everything at the right place though it doesn't look like he's got it, there's Jenkins' character Giles who's a misunderstood artist and attracted to men, which makes him twice an outcast and there's Michael Stuhlbarg's Hoffstetter, a good physician but trustworthy to a limit as his real name's Dimitri. It's interesting that the only three good men live in a sort of duplicity, deliberate or not, they're never what they claim to be and what they are inside, they're forced to hide it. Women are straight-forward but good men are driven into pretending to be what they're not, as if the reality of men was one of ugly nature. And when you have a film that handles an Alien species, it's comprehensible that "Man" belongs to the antagonistic side but women are certainly not part of that "Man" equation. Interesting.
One could even argue that Jenkins' character didn't want to help his friend Eliza first, until he realized how 'different' he was. In the scene where he gently pats the restaurant guy's hand and realizes that he crossed the line, you can see the young man making a 180° turn and going from a smiling guy to a dirty bigot, homophobic and much more racist since he tells the Black couple to get out, that's the reality of men, whether American or Russian, it doesn't make any difference. So obviously Del Toro is also putting a few baits for the feminist wave, and the janitor job is eloquent: it's literally the women who clean the men's "dirty work". Still, for all his efforts, he still got that comment from Portman when she nominated all the *male* directors in the Golden Globes ceremony, apparently, it didn't please Del Toro, but he should be good sport; If "The Shape of Water" tried to mix fantasy and sci-fi material with the current "man vs. woman" issues, it's only fair that these considerations interfered with the Awards race.
Now, did I like the film?
I liked Strickland because he drove the action, so yes, I liked the narrative. I thought the nomination of Jenkins was unnecessary but Octavia Spencer's was outrageous, I swear she plays the same role whenever she's nominated, and when your friend is a mute woman, it's not difficult to be a scene stealer, Sally Hawkins was impressive not much because of her silent performances but the way she dedicated herself to that role. Let's face it, she's not a natural beauty but she really made herself more beautiful than any other pretty face of Hollywood by being a gentle, nice and most of all, decent woman.
Now, my real problem is with Del Toro, no pun intended, I thought he was trying to swim in too many waters at the same time: he makes a beautiful romance and it works, a cat-and-mouse thriller, it works, but when the film gets too cutesy and poetic, I'm afraid he loses his guidance. As I mentioned it in the intro, yes, his film reminded me of Jeunet's world, from "Delicatessen" to "Amelie", yes, they give a specific texture to the universe of Eliza, old fashioned and kitschy looking, but a little less could have been more. What happened to Del Toro reminds me of Gilliam when he gets carried away by his own extravaganza... in "The Shape of Water", when Eliza gets naked in the water, it's simple, sensual and powerful... when she imagines the Broadway musical, it's just too much.
At the end, it's like Del Toro having the same childish desire to seek approbation from his peers that he tries to make an art-house movie out of what could have been a terrific thriller and a great romance. I didn't mind the "social commentary" aspect but for that, I found the "Billboards" film to be more powerful and more deserving of the Best Picture Oscar.