Love, monsters submerge in ‘Water’

Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” may not boast the century’s weirdest sci-fi movie coupling. That honor goes to the 2016 Mexican movie “The Untamed.”

But del Toro’s vision of human/ fantastic creature sex is likely the most romantic ever filmed. By the time Sally Hawkins’ mute heroine Elisa Esposito gets the gilled-and-gorgeous fish man (played by del Toro’s regular monster mimer Doug Jones) alone in her flooding bathroom, their need for each other could not be more palpable.

Especially Elisa’s, whose association of erotic pleasure with water is carefully set up in the film.

“First of all, female sexuality seen in a natural way is very rare in movies,” del Toro points out. “It’s always objectifying, always serving glamor or a winkwink perversity, it doesn’t exist except from the male gaze. What I wanted to do was show how integral water was to her. When you’re blessed to have your first encounter in the bath where you’d been alone, it’s a very special repairing of your soul.”

“I land in her bathtub as my place of refuge,” Jones adds about his character. “Now we have no barriers between us, and privacy, so our touching becomes a big love scene. It had a purity and innocence to it that communicated volumes, I thought.”

The bathroom in Elisa’s apartment was recreated in a water tank for when Elisa gets an idea for an even more heightened experience.

“When she stuffed towels under the door, turned the faucets on and flooded the room, we were in the tank,” Jones says.

FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES This image released by Fox Searchlight Pictures shows Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones in a scene from the film “The Shape of Water.”

PHOTO BY KERRY HAYES — COURTESY OF FOX SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES Sally Hawkins and Doug Jones in the film “The Shape of Water.