The Shape of Water is an intriguing dark fantasy film from 2017. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, it stars the awesome Sally Hawkins as a mute and lonely cleaner in 1962 America.

She works at a government facility where she falls in love with a recently captured humanoid amphibian creature monster lizard thing. That’s the plot, which explores wider themes of otherness and societal exclusion in a splishy sploshy sort of way.

All Sorts of Feelings in The Shape of Water

The plot may seem bizarre, but it’s a different take on the whole Beauty and the Beast concept. It’s also similar to the novella Mrs. Caliban (1982) by Rachel Ingalls, but the film doesn’t seem to have been inspired by it.

Set in Baltimore of Maryland, the films opens with Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins). She’s a lonely, shy, and mute woman who works as a cleaning lady for a top secret government agency.

Out of hours she hangs out with her gay neighbour and friend Giles (Richard Jenkins) and watches movies.

Then one day, whilst working, THE MONSTER arrives. Elisa is quite besotted by the unusual beast and soon finds time to hang out with the amphibian—they start bonding.

What follows in The Shape of Water is a weird love film. You can read into various themes here, particularly in otherness and marginalisation. The era in which the film is set was heavily bigoted, with Elisa’s friend Giles facing homophobia and seeing racism first-hand.

The film’s antagonist is Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon).

Shannon is a brilliant actor and very effective as bad guys. He’s on great form here as a highly Conservative man, a raging workaholic, and with very little empathy. He hates the amphibian monster and wants it dead.

But when Elisa breaks it out of the agency, all hell breaks loose.

She whisks the monster home and the film finds a more fantastic edge. There’s one sweet scene where Elisa and the lizard dude flood their bathroom to share and intimate moment, with water dripping down into the movie theatre below. The owner hurtles upstairs to complain to X about his FOUR angry paying customers.

And other scenes where Elisa attempts to articulate her love, imagining a song and dance number she’s able to erupt into.

There are cute moments like that, sweet in their nature as Elisa is a very likeable character. Sally Hawkins is fantastic in this, even though she doesn’t have much dialogue. It’s all expressed through her very engaging face and she makes the film what it is.

No denying it’s an odd film, but very much in keeping with director Guillermo del Toro’s canon of dark fantasy works that unsettle and enthral.

The Shape of Water is intriguing, funny, and sweet. It’s also dark and brooding when it needs to be. If you want to see a weirdly romantic time of it, then it’s well worth your time.

The Shape of Water’s Sploshy Production Process

Guillermo del Toro wrote the script with Sally Hawkins intended for the lead.

Hawkins is a shy and retiring person, so chances are you may not even know who she is. She rarely gives interviews, so doesn’t dominate the news like other more attention-seeking actors do (Sydney Sweeney etc.).

She gave one of those rare interviews with The Guardian in October 2022: Sally Hawkins on being shy and empathetic.

“Hawkins was born in south London to teachers who later became successful children’s book authors. Their home was filled with stories. Hawkins, who is dyslexic, struggled academically, but she inhabited her imagination with dexterity and ease, and if as a child she wasn’t developing tales of her own she was embellishing existing ones.”

Guillermo del Toro has said of her:

“She’s one of the people I most revere in the world. An extraordinarily good human being – the word empathy doesn’t begin to describe it.”

Her prep for the role is intriguing, including watching silent movie era films by Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd, and Laurel and Hardy.

The film’s love interest, an amphibian scaly monster, is a a man in a very impressive suit. The actor Doug Jones who did all the work from there was Doug Jones.

The Shape of Water was shot in Toronto and Hamilton in Ontario, Canada, with locations such as the Elgin Theatre used. The shoot ran from August to November 2016.

With a budget of $20 million, it was a surprise success and made $195.2 million at the global box office.

Guillermo del Toro is a very famous director, so no surprise that his star clout got people into cinemas. But even so, this is one very odd film and we’re pleased to see so many people flocked to see it.

Since its release, The Shape of Water has sparked all sorts of thematic analysis. The humanisation of the monster, for example, and challenging society’s take on the Other (in a philosophical sense). Differences, in other words, which can lead to societal misfits.

However, another take is that Elisa is disabled and outcast from society, so can only find happiness in the form of an amphibian monster…

Up for debate, but that’s the beauty of film. We think its message is a positive one.