"The Shape of Water"

Normally, I try to stick with the lesser known films or films that just came into theaters, but a friend recommended I see this and I decided it needed a few words. After all, this was the winner of four Academy awards this year and being called "an other-worldly fairytale". It seems only right to mention a film like this.

Taking place in 1962 Baltimore, Elisa Esposito (Sally Hawkins) is a cleaning woman who has been mute since she was scarred and abandoned at infancy. Leading a simple life she has only a few friends, Giles (Richard Jenkins) and old artist who lives with his cats next door to Elisa and Zelda Fuller (Octavia Spencer) a fellow cleaning lady who spends most of their day talking to her and for her when needing translation. 

Working for a government facility to clean their labs and offices, Elisa discovers that they are bringing in an Amphibian Man (Doug Jones, who played another water creature Abe in the Hellboy movies) that at first is seen as aggressive, but while cleaning the room he is kept in Elisa discovers he is not only intelligent, but responds to music and is able to learn sign language. It soon becomes a friendship and things seem great until she learns that the head of security Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) has been beating him to the point where he may eventually kill him and takes it upon herself to rescue him. Yet as her relationship with the creature grows, it becomes a race against time to get him out of harm's way with the threat of Strickland's manhunt for them and Russian spies wishing to take the creature out of American hands. 

This film is without a doubt an epic love story. A blend of "Beauty and the Beast" and "Romeo and Juliet" told with humor and suspense. The love they have is projected to an empathetic degree that you cannot help feel it despite the strange circumstances. It will be one for cinematic history and worthy of five G.M.Stars with this critic.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐