Del Toro’s ‘Shape of Water’ casts a spell on Toronto
Who cared what time TORONTO it was?
The Shape of Water began an hour late at Toronto International Film Festival, but the besotted audience didn’t seem to mind, giving director Guillermo del Toro a rousing welcome before the movie even rolled.
The director’s latest fantasy was hotly anticipated here, having just won the Venice Film Festival’s top prize, the Golden Lion. Del Toro’s new dark fairy tale, set in the 1960s, tells the story of Eliza (Sally Hawkins), a mute woman who bonds with a captured sea monster at the government laboratory where she works.
The Shape of Water is a timely fable, addressing the fear and subjugation of the “other,” with Hawkins’ voiceless janitor (an “invisible person,” as the Mexican director calls her) the only human willing to search for the amphibian’s hidden humanity.
At the Q&A after the film, del Toro contemplated his monsterladen canon, from Hellboy to Pan’s Labyrinth.
“(Many say) film is only valuable if it’s social drama. And what I say is, no. There’s art and beauty and power in the primal images of fantasy and parable and fairy tales. … I think realism is amazing, but not every filmmaker has to be realistic.”
Certainly, in The Shape of Water (astonishingly made for less than $20 million, despite its
sumptuous visuals), del Toro paints complex protagonists. “I wanted to show somebody real,” he says of his “beauty,” a custodian who can’t speak, smokes and starts her days with
a sexy bath.
Del Toro’s “beast” is a sea creature (Doug Jones, soon to hit the small screen in CBS All Access’ Star Trek: Discovery) that feasts on an adorable cat. “Love is saying, ‘I’m screwed, you’re screwed, but we’re great together, somehow,’ ” he grinned.
By Eliza’s side is her fellow, more fearful janitor (Octavia Spencer) and a devoted, closeted neighbor (Richard Jenkins), while Michael Shannon is the resident baddie of the laboratory, armed with a cattle prod. Many have predicted the film firmly places Hawkins in the Academy Awards’ best-actress race.
“Hawkins carries this movie as a character who never speaks but who serves as the protagonist. She rises to the challenge with grace and gusto,” wrote Collider’s Adam Chitwood.
Uproxx’s Mike Ryan went a step further, calling The Shape of Water “one of the best films of 2017 and one of the best romance films of the last decade.”
The Shape of Water arrives in theaters Dec. 8.