Catch two Del Toros this week—director Guillermo in The Shape of Water, and actor Bencio in The Last Jedi
All of Guillermo Del Toro’s movies are lush, intensely sensual imaginings filled with dreamlike wonder. In The Shape of Water, sexuality is finally allowed to take center stage. The sexy woman part is an unlikely candidate named Elisa Espisito (Sally Hawkins)—a mute, mousey, and orphaned Baltimore cleaning lady who mops up blood in a top-secret laboratory. The blood comes from “The Asset” (Doug Jones), an amphibious Creature From the Black Lagoon-stye humanoid stolen from the Amazon River. Late one night, Elisa discovers The Asset housed in a murky-water aquarium and makes contact by playing music on her portable record player and feeding him hard boiled eggs. Overhearing the plan to dissect The Asset for scientific research, Elisa whisks him away to her own apartment where he lives in her bathtub. Growing closer, the pair make semi-amphibious love before his hiding place is discovered by the Bible-thumping, military-industrial-complex mad scientists and Cold War Russian spies. Wow!