Know the deal with the ‘Shape of Water’ fish sex

Guillermo del Toro’s best-picture-winning “The Shape of Water” isn’t only about a lady getting with an amphibious fish-man creature.

It’s a film that’s built on allegories and bigger messages: It embraces magical realism and is about outsiders, showing your humanity when the rest of the world doesn’t show you basic respect, toxic masculinity, and the indignities brought on by racism, sexism and homophobia.

Okay, all that being said: You could very well walk away from this movie talking about the fish sex. The movie is set in 1960s Baltimore, and Sally Hawkins plays Elisa Esposito, a mute cleaning lady at a research facility that handles top-secret government projects. One day, a new “asset” is brought in: an amphibious creature that looks like a cross between a man and a fish. The creature’s handler, Strickland calls it an abomination and an affront. It was worshiped as a god in the Amazon, where it was caught. Elisa forms a bond with this creature; both are misunderstood and not heard by the outside world. She clearly comes to see the “asset” as more than an animal, referring to the creature at first as “it,” then as “him.” “When he looks at me, the way he looks at me, he does not know what I lack or how I am incomplete,” she says. “He sees me for what I am, as I am.”

“The movie tries to embody the beauty of the ‘Other What makes us different is what makes us great. It’s sort of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ in a way that shows you that beauty doesn’t have to be the perfect princess, she doesn’t have to look like a perfume-commercial model.”

Del Toro further subverts this kind of romantic genre; his monster doesn’t have to turn into a human to be loved or renounce who he is: “Because, to me, love is not transformation. Love is acceptance and understanding.”

But we digress. So does this lady get it on with a fish-humanoid thing or what? Yes. They first begin communicating using sign language and (romance!) chowing down on hard-boiled eggs. They grow closer over time, then they finally hook up.

Related searches: guillermo del toro, shape of water, alejandro gonzález iñárritu