A review of the 2017 film “The Shape Of Water”
Somehow I didn’t manage to see this fantasy horror movie at the cinema and, by the time I viewed it on the television, it had collected a whole host of nominations and awards, including 13 nominations at the 90th Academy Awards where it won for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Production Design, and Best Original Score. I was not surprised, therefore, that I loved it.
The work is a particular triumph for Mexico’s Guillermo del Toro, who wrote and directed “Pan’s Labyrinth” (which I really admired), since he imagined the story and co-wrote and directed the movie. But it is also a remarkable performance by Britain’s Sally Hawkins who plays a mute cleaning woman in a secret American government laboratory in 1962 where she befriends a humanoid amphibian who has been found in a South American river and held for Cold War experimentation.
The ending is pure magic.