The Shape of Water (2017)

"The Shape of Water" is a "Beauty and the Beast" in the view of Guillermo del Toro. If you've seen anything made by him before - "Pan's Labyrinth", "Hellboy" or even "Pacific Rim" in a totally different niche, or even more the disaster that was "Crimson Peak", it's impossible not to notice the same directing style, and more particularly the influence in the visuals & production design. That part brings a lot here, but the big plus comes from somewhere else.

The action is set sometime in the '50s-'60s, in the middle of the Cold War, in a research lab in US, where a secret delivery is done. The contents: a human shaped creature fished out of Amazon, manifesting survival capabilities both under water and out of it. The clear resemblance reminded me of Abe Sapian, the merman in "Hellboy", especially given that we also have del Toro there, but in the end it seems there's no direct link between the two. So, moving back to the lab, "the Beast" is repeatedly tortured by an evil security chief (Michael Shannon). But as in any institution, we have the auxiliary personnel, and as part of this we have "the Beauty" (Sally Hawkins) - here a simple cleaning lady. Who shares a sort of similar communication problem with the blueish aquaman = she's mute. And like that an "impossible romance" begins, entangling within it also a Russian conspiracy (Cold War context, remember...), but let's leave some stuff to find out from the movie.

The big plus I was referring to comes from the actors side. Michael Shannon is playing a totally detestable negative character, but the one who steals the screen is clearly Sally Hawkins. The acting is exceptional, especially given that we're not talking about a mute actress, and also we don't have here something in the range of "The Artist". The part is a very natural one. Besides the actors we have the rest mentioned in the start, and I don't want to get into more technical details - everything leads to the feeling it creates, one that gets you there, you're in some gloomy '60s where somehow some color emerges from somewhere. Normally, out of more or less subjective reasons, I'm not really fond of romances, but this was nice :) If just the ending that's a bit forced wouldn't make "the incredible romance" indeed incredible...

Rating: 4 out of 5