It has 13, yes 13!, Oscar nominations and the luminous Sally Hawkins but does Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water live up to the hype?
“Man is as silent as the grave. But if farts were flattery? Honey, he’d be Shakespeare”
First things first, Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth is probably one of my all-time favourite films and definitely one of the ones that affected me most, as anyone who saw me sobbing helplessly outside the cinema on Haymarket for a good ten minutes after it ended. So The Shape of Water had something to live up to and including Sally Hawkins in its cast was a good start.
And in its love story between a mute cleaning lady and a 7 foot tall fish monster captured in the Amazon and held hostage in a government research facility, it certainly treads a unique path. And though it may sound unconventional, an interspecies rom-com with additional gay and African-American sidekicks seems pretty much par for the course in 2018. Continue reading “Oscar Week Film Review: The Shape of Water”
