The Shape of Water (Guillermo del Toro, 2017)

At the height of the Cold War, a mute cleaner at an American government laboratory encounters a humanoid water creature captured to be studied and weaponised, and falls in love with it. Unsurprisingly, the military are more interested in vivisecting the creature than nurturing it, and she soon hatches a plan to get it out of their hands.
Del Toro has built his career on far-fetched premises like this, and the conviction with which he pursues them is almost essential to make them work. But here, he may have gone a step too far. As good as Sally Hawkins is as the delicate but determined heroine, with sterling support by Richard Jenkins as her gentle closest friend and Michael Shannon as the irredeemable soldier-villain (akin to the evil captain played by Sergi López in Pan's Labyrinth), a seething mass of prejudice and loathing, and as fabulous the whole of the production design and soundtrack are too, it has to rest on the feasibility and charm of the premise of spontaneous interspecies erotic love, and that's asking a bit much.
It picked up a plethora of accolades and awards, including the Best Director and Best Picture Oscars, and it's easy to see the in an age of big-budget kids' animations with something always included to placate the grown-ups, and droves of sci-fi and superhero films watched by all and sundry, the time is right for romances which are also out-and-out fantasies. Hence the success of La La Land, and now this. They're both full of magical and delightful moments and lovingly made, but also heavily dependent on our surrender to their essential conceits. One wonders how much further we'll go down this road.

6/10