The Shape of Water Review

Del Toro directs this as a musical that never quite becomes one. Dan Laustsen floods a 1962 Baltimore laboratory in green and teal, Alexandre Desplat scores it with accordion and whistling, and there is a black and white dance number the film commits to without a flinch. Sally Hawkins plays Elisa without a word and still carries every scene she is in, working almost entirely through her hands and her posture, while Doug Jones inside the amphibian suit gets more expression out of prosthetics than most actors manage with a face.

Richard Jenkins and Octavia Spencer supply the warmth. Paul Austerberry's production design, the flooded bathroom above all, is the best of the year. The script is the weak seam. Michael Shannon's Strickland is a cartoon of American cruelty carrying a rotting finger for a metaphor, the Soviet subplot exists to fill runtime, and the mechanics of stealing an asset from a federal facility are waved through. As a fable told with total sincerity it works, and sincerity this unembarrassed is rarer than good plotting.