In a world of fuckboys and girls, many people are given the sage advice that there are “plenty of other fish in the sea.”
This common expression is meant to soothe your broken heart through the suggestion that people who will likely sleep with you are a dime a dozen — and if you don’t believe that just download Tinder.
However, the idiom is taken more literally in Guillermo del Toro's highly anticipated film, The Shape of Water.
The Shape of Water, which stars Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Doug Jones, and Octavia Spencer, has already earned heaps of praise at the Toronto Film Festival, and earned the prestigious Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival.
The movie, which sets a frightening fairytale romance during the Cold War era, finally has a red band trailer, which finally gives viewers their first real glimpse of del Toro’s mermaid-like creature, brought to life by Doug Jones.
Is there anything more satisfying than witnessing Sally Hawkin’s mute character, Elisa, signing at Michael Shannon to fuck off?
Jones's character, a nod to The Creature From the Black Lagoon, which del Toro saw when he was just six years old, is considered the American government's most "sensitive asset" and is wanted by the Soviet Union. Elisa, a lonely woman who cleans the secret facility, also wants the creature — wink, wink.
But, really, how can you blame her? The film is set in 1962, in a world constantly on the brink of nuclear war, where she is ruled over by unkind men
It took del Toro’s team three years to perfectly craft the creature, and make it believable that Elisa, as well as the audience, would want to see it “alive.”
Del Toro told GQ, “We spent three years designing the creature. Perfecting the shoulder-to-butt ratio. The butt is really, really constructed.”
On top of a cruel military villain in Shannon, a merman with an apparently stellar ass, and all of the charming characters who bring the film together, there is an underlying theme of love and near unbelievable magic promised. If you’ve ever seen Pan’s Labyrinth, then you know exactly the kind of magic we’re talking about.
Fox Searchlight has set the domestic release of The Shape of Water for December 8.
