Movie of the Week: The Shape of Water

[jacey]

I'm catching up with my Movies of the Week blog posts. This is from 14th February.

I absolutely adored The Shape of Water.

Set in 1962 in a secret laboratory somewhere in Baltimore this features Sally Hawkins as Elisa, a mute cleaning lady who make friends with and then falls in love with an amphibious captured sea creture, a beautiful monster (Doug Jones).

Elisa's muteness is explained by three parallel scars on the side of her throat and we are left to draw our own conclusions about them.

It's Guillermo del Toro'sblood-curdling fairy tale of forbidden romance is multi-layered. Elisa has a good commannd of sign language, but she's used to not being heard. Her only friends are workmate Zelda (Octavia Spencer) and her neighbour, Giles (Richard Jenkins).
The villain of piece is Strickland (Michael Shannon), one-dimensional in his relentless cruelty and the pursuit of the creature when Elisa and Zelda rescue him.

There's excitement and love and an ambiguous ending which you can put your own spin on. If you missed this at the cinema, treat yourself to the DVD when it comes out. Marvellous.