Review of The Shape of Water (2017) by Charles B — 04 Feb 2018

Fairy tales attract us because of their symbolic simplicity: they exist in world of archetypes, in this case it's Beauty and the Beast. But that simplicity can easily stray into thinness. Del Toro makes great efforts to mask this with wondrously rich production design (a 40's - 50's world of deco wallpapers, green ceramic, linoleum and chrome has rarely looked so solid and the lighting is phantasmagoric) and by surrounding his central romance with a variety of skilled character actors (Jenkins is gently sublime as ever, with Spencer and Stulbarg lending kindly support,) but the story is simple to the point of non-existence.

Hawkins acts like a ballerina but her marine lover is too much a thing of rubber fins and expressionless digital eyes to ever register any real emotion, leaving the burden of transmitting the relationship entirely to the heroine.

And, adult as the film may be with its gunshot wounds and nods towards sexual assault, homophobia, racism and torture, any child knows that fish don't have penises. Shannon does excellently in the role of the implacable, self-loathing pursuer, so familiar from so many Disney cartoons.

In the end, this has no more substance than any animation from the Magical Kingdom. Even on Del Toro's own terms, this doesn't come close to threatening 'Pan's Labyrinth' or 'The Devil's Backbone.

' It's too weightlessly neat, a child's toy wrapped in grown-up paper.