My nautical romance
Sally Hawkins’ lead performance one reason The Shape of Water has entered Oscar conversation
The Shape of Water is one of the year’s Cinderella stories, a monster thriller that is now a hot Oscar contender as a romantic love story — it got a big boost this past weekend by winning the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Expectations are high that Guillermo del Toro’s latest movie will also win over audiences at the Toronto International Film Festival, where it receives its Canadian premiere Monday, in advance of a wide theatrical rollout in December.
But lead star Sally Hawkins has a different fairy tale in mind when she describes the film, in which her character Elisa is a mute cleaning woman in a secret U.S. government facility, who falls for a mysterious merman (played by Doug Jones) who is being kept as a Cold War military “asset.” “It’s monster-led but it’s more Beauty
and the Beast, as it were,” the auburnhaired English actress says from London, in an interview earlier this year.
“It’s a love story. And he’s not a beast; he’s a beautiful creature that she falls in love with. He’s part man, part fish. The film is extraordinary.” She has strong company in it. Beside Jones — an actor and former contortionist who also appeared in del Toro’s earlier films Pan’s Labyrinth, Mim
ic, Hellboy and Crimson Peak — Hawkins also shares the big screen with Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Richard Jen- kins and Michael Stuhlbarg.
Hawkins seems a good bet for a Best Actress nomination for the movie, especially as it follows the acclaim for Maudie, a hit from last year’s festival circuit, in which she played legendary Nova Scotia painter Maud Lewis.
Hawkins was previously Oscar nominated in 2014 for Woody Allen’s tragicomic Blue Jasmine.
Much of The Shape of Water was filmed in Toronto, the city Mexican director del Toro now calls home, and Hawkins says it was “a gift” to work with him on such a creative endeavour.
She took American Sign Language classes and dance lessons to prepare for her role as Elisa. Both skills were needed for the movie and she wanted to master them.
“Every part, it calls on different things,” Hawkins says.
“It’s always a challenge, and even just the practicalities of the way you’re filming, how you’re filming, the physicality . . . I love what I do,” explains the 41-year-old star, who made her film debut in 2002 with Mike Leigh’s All or Nothing and made new fans in 2002 with the same director’s Happy-Go-Lucky, where her performance garnered her a Golden Globe.
She said she adored working with del Toro, who has previously dived deep into fantasy/horror with such films as Pan’s
Labyrinth and Crimson Peak. “He’s a genius in the true sense of the word,” Hawkins says.
“I feel very lucky to have worked with him. It’s quite an unusual part, and from what I saw of the cinematography, and the way he directs, he is an extraordinary writer and auteur. He’s wonderful to watch and to learn from.
“I learned a great deal about filmmaking and storytelling from him — and it’s storytelling on an epic scale, the way he thinks.”
Writer/director del Toro returns the compliment. In the production notes for the film, he describes Hawkins as his “muse” when he was writing the screenplay.
“Elisa is not someone who had a horrible existence until the creature showed up. She was not leading a glamorous existence by any means, but she was content. I needed someone who evokes that kind of happiness, whose face is able to express every hue without a word,” he says.
“Sally has that kind of unique energy, so that is why I wrote it for her. Sally is the most genuine, unaffected person and I don’t think she is capable of doing anything that isn’t emotionally real.”