Guillermo del Toro’s Take On Gill-Man In Love

Now playing at more multiplexes than art houses in my area:

THE SHAPE OF WATER

(Dir. Guillermo del Toro, 2017)

When Guillermo del Toro turned down the chance to remake (or reboot) the CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON for Universal’s “Dark Universe” series he definitely made the right decision.

And that’s not just because the pending franchise has gotten off to a very shaky start with last summer’s THE MUMMY flop, and is in danger of being scrapped altogether, but because there’s no way he would’ve been able to build upon the concept to make such a beautifully bizarre love story thriller as THE SHAPE OF WATER under a big studio banner.

Del Toro, co-writing with Vanessa Taylor, infringes on no copyrights here, as the amphibian man here is never referred to as “Gill-man,” but it uses the basics as obvious jumping off points for the premise of “what if the creature got the girl?”

Set in 1962 Baltimore, the film is told from the point of view of Sally Hawkins as Elisa, a mute cleaning lady who works the night shift at a secret government laboratory. We get a look into Elisa’s lonely world up front as we see her eat pie with her neighbor Giles (Richard Jenkins), a depressed, closeted artist who loves watching old musicals on TV. Elisa and Giles live in rundown apartments above a movie palace theater, so del Toro works in his love for cinema there too.

At Elisa’s work, where she converses in sign language with her co-worker Zelda (Octavia Spencer, again playing the help), she learns that a aquatic creature is being held in a huge metal water tank at the facility, and that it’s being tortured by Colonel Richard Strickland (a deliciously creepy Michael Shannon) who captured it in South America.

Elisa makes friends with the amphibian man (played by actor / contortionist Doug Jones) by feeding it hard boiled eggs, and teaching him how to sign, and a romance forms. When she finds out that they’re going to dissect him, over protest by scientist Robert Hoffstetler (Michael Stuhlbarg), she plots to help him escape.

The escape sequence, among other elements, gave me flashbacks to Ron Howard’s 1984 rom com SPLASH, which had Tom Hanks falling for Daryl Hannah as a mermaid who he rescues from a secret lab, but that did nothing to hinder the spell this film so sweetly casts.

Back at Elisa’s apartment where the fish guy mostly stays in a bathtub filled with salt and some chemicals that Hoffstetler gave her, they consummate their relationship. While the movie contains much grotesque imagery concerning such things as Strickland’s bitten off fingers, and a cat being eaten, the love scenes are as tasteful and touching as scenes between amphibians and humans can possibly be.

You just may need to suspend disbelief considering such premises like that by putting towels under the door you can fill the bathroom of a crumbling apartment completely to the ceiling with water, but if you can do that you’re in for some visual treats courtesy of cinematographer Dan Laustsen.

Without speaking, Hawkins puts in a wonderfully communicative performance that shows fluid chemistry with Jones’ creature, and has a great moment standing up to Shannon’s evil Strickland.

She is a large part of what makes the small, dark off-kilter fantasy THE SHAPE OF WATER del Toro’s most emotionally affecting work yet.

Maybe this means that more established filmmakers should turn down franchise work to go off on their own to make movies inspired by concepts they wouldn’t be allowed to do in those big studio entries. I mean, it sure worked for del Toro.

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Cate Blanchett Is A Hot Mess In Woody Allen's BLUE JASMINE

Now playing at an indie art house near you:

BLUE JASMINE (Dir. Woody Allen, 2013)

In Woody Allen’s newest, Cate Blanchett’s Jeanette “Jasmine” Francis is the definition of a “hot mess.” A former Manhattan socialite who was previously married to Alec Baldwin as a millionaire investment banker, Blanchett is now a penniless widow who has no home. This is due to Baldwin’s Bernie Madoff-style swindling that put him in prison, where he committed suicide.

Blanchett’s adopted sister, Ginger, played by Sally Hawkins (HAPPY GO LUCKY), takes her into her humble San Franciscan apartment, ostensibly until the disgraced down-on-her-luck lady can get back on her feet.

In flashbacks we learn that Hawkins was once married to Andrew Dice Clay (yes, that Andrew Dice Clay) as a construction worker named Augie, but they lost their savings because of a deal gone wrong orchestrated by Baldwin. Hawkins is now dating Bobby Cannavale (Third Watch, Boardwalk Empire) as an auto mechanic that Blanchett dismisses as just another version of Clay’s Augie.

Having never completed college, Blanchett takes a computer class while working at a dentist’s office, but she doesn’t appear to have the aptitude for it. Also she has to fight off the advances of her dentist boss, A SERIOUS MAN’s Michael Stuhlbarg (another Boardwalk Empire regular).

Things look up for Blanchett and Hawkins when they attend a ritzy party together and meet new suitors in the form of Peter Sarsgaard as an aspiring politician, and Louis C.K. (a fitting addition to Allen’s cinematic universe) as a audio equipment salesman.

It’s a pleasure to report that Allen’s 44th movie as writer and director is among his strongest films. The fluidity of how he flashes back and forward is flawless, never confusing the viewer as to what happened when, with the dialogue’s naturalistic flow filling in all the information needed.

The frazzled boozy Blanchett, a character that's a cross between Tennessee William's Blanche Dubois from STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE and John Cassevete's Mabel from A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE, carries it all along, accomplishing the neat feat of making you care about her, yet disdaining her actions often at the same time. It’s an Oscar worthy performance that’s impossible to look away from.

Jasmine's unraveling is often handled humorously, but there’s a deep sadness (hence the title) to her story that will works its way into your psyche and stay there for days.

Equal parts comedy and drama (I hate the term “dramedy”), BLUE JASMINE could be seen as a ballsy breakdown of how one from a lofty background (Hawkins says repeatedly that Blanchett was born with “the good genes”), could end up a street person: A riches-to-rags cautionary tale for our shaky financial times. It also works as a treatise on the development of delusion, and the personal dangers of vainly trying to keep up appearances.

Blanchett keeps romanticizing about how the standard “Blue Moon” was playing when she first met Baldwin, but each time the memory gets hazier. By the end it’s as jumbled as she is.

With such solid performances (aside from Blanchett – Baldwin, Hawkins, Clay, Cannavale, Sarsgaard, and C.K. are all terrific), a superb screenplay, the crisp colorful cinematography of Javier Aguirresarobe (VICKY CRISTINA BARCELONA), and the expected yet still pleasing jazz score, BLUE JASMINE proves that the 77-year old filmmaker can still wow us.

Blanchett’s Jasmine may be one Hell of a hot mess, but her movie is anything but messy. It’s simply hot stuff through and through.


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MADE IN DAGENHAM: The Film Babble Blog Review

MADE IN DAGENHAM (Dir. Nigel Cole, 2010)

With her awkward body language and floppy brunette bangs framing a face dominated by an overbite, Sally Hawkins is quite an unlikely movie star.

In her first major role since her acclaimed turn in Mike Leigh’s HAPPY-GO-LUCKY, Hawkins plays a fictional strike leader in a story based on the Ford sewing machinists strike of 1968.

As the character is an amalgam of a number of different women involved in the factory protest, it’s readily apparent how fictionalized this film is.

Reading the real record of events leaves me with a bad aftertaste. It’s one thing to embellish, but what went down would have more impact if it was less loosely adapted for standard feel-good formatting.

That said, it’s a competently told tale with dead on ‘60s décor, and it contains some ace acting – along with Hawkins there’s the lovably gruff Bob Hoskins as a Union Steward, Geraldine James as Hawkins’ best friend, Richard Schiff (Toby from The West Wing) as a bad guy Ford executive, and Miranda Richardson as Secretary of State Barbara Castle.

But for all its heartfelt passion about the movement fighting for equal pay for women, it’s strangely stiff with several unnecessary scenes that make it feel stretched thin.

Still, the extremely affable Hawkins has a handful of affecting emotional moments that lift the material, and make me rate it slightly higher than I would without them, so audiences may be willing to warm to her plucky determination.

That is if they can make it through the often crazy thick accents - blimey, it seems like British movies more and more need subtitles like every other foreign film.

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