Scene

del Toro nears perfection with 'Shape of Water'

Magic. Guillermo del Toro’s genre-confounding film “The Shape of Water” is a wonderfully transporting adult fairy-tale that luxuriates in the intersections of sexuality, love and humanity. It is a movie enamored with movies, yet it retains an inextricable and unpretentious purity of self, an emotional core undiluted by any cheap homage. Part creature feature, spy thriller and romance, “The Shape of Water” largely avoids empty stylization, investing its heartfelt story with substance and painting it with all the shades of blue and green del Toro could muster.

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Expansive, empty mansions sprawl across the Southern California landscape, housing moody teenagers squabbling with their parents. An unspoken tragic backstory clouds the sight of our six main characters. We see them shuffle through meaningless high school days, far from each other and the happiness they once shared. Can they mend bonds broken, or will they remain distant versions of their former selves? Oh, also, their parents are evil, the teens might possess superpowers and, for some inexplicable reason, everyone, good and evil, uses Lyft.

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