Consent, Sexuality and The Shape of Water

Please note that the following piece contains narrative spoilers for The Shape of Water! 

Guillermo del Toro’s 2017 film The Shape of Water is releasing in the United Kingdom on Valentine’s Day 2018 because it is a love story. It just so happens to be a love story that involves an amphibian monster man.

The Shape of Water is one of my favourite films of 2017 (I will call it that even though I only saw it several days ago, boo geography) and it is a film that deals with themes of sexuality in ways that are far, far more positive and complex than most Romance movies currently screening in cinemas. The Shape of Water is a love story unlike any other, a fairytale dream of a thing that manages to portray a surprisingly healthy relationship between its two main characters, Elisa (Sally Hawkins) and amphibian creature “The Asset” (Doug Jones) in a film that is heavily weighted with emotion and sentiment.

When we are first introduced to Elisa, we as an audience might immediately perceive her as something of a wallflower. She lives alone in a small apartment, she polishes her plain, clunky shoes with a novelty duck-shaped shoe polisher, and she doesn’t speak a word. But then, Del Toro chooses to show her masturbating in her bath tub: a moment that isn’t really played for laughs, or played to show Elisa as desperate or overly lustful. It’s just part of her daily routine, something she does as a human being. And it’s perfect.

Too often, “shy” characters are portrayed in films as supposedly asexual or virginal, not knowing anything about the world of sexuality due to the filmmaker’s desires to have them be seen by the audience as “pure” and “innocent”, but also awkward and socially inept. Stereotypes are easy to write, and audiences know the trope of the awkward character who can barely strike up a conversation with their crush. Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with asexual characters (I’d absolutely love to see more asexual/aromantic/demisexual etc. characters and relationships portrayed on-screen!) but none of these “asexual” characters are ever implicitly stated to be so, and their lack of sexuality or romantic inclinations are always inherently tied in with their shyness. They are not really asexual, they are a stereotype that the audience comes to associate with asexuality, or a lack of desire for sex and/or romance. By showing Elisa as someone who defies this stereotype, Del Toro sets us up for a subversive narrative that handles sexuality and romance unlike most other films.

When Elisa and the creature finally decide to do the do, it’s handled, in my opinion, beautifully. We as an audience have been lusting over the amphibian since his first appearance, because that’s what we do with monsters, and monster movies. As soon as a monster appears on-screen, especially one that’s partly obscured by water, we are desperate to look at them and take their entire body in. Do they look like us? How do they differ from us? Do they have warmth in their eyes, or are they cold and harsh? Do they have claws? Sharp teeth? Could they rip us apart and kill us? Like Elisa, we are desperate to know more, and when the creature finally reaches out to touch her, Elisa’s first instinct is to panic and run, closing the door behind her.

Despite being, as next-door-neighbour Giles (Richard Jenkins) calls him, a “wild animal”, the creature does not pursue Elisa. Instead, Elisa goes to bed, and is left alone. She then decides that she does want to have sex with the creature, and she stands and undresses for him. This is a wonderful moment because there is no question of consent here: the creature expresses an interest, Elisa is initially scared, but then thinks more on it and returns to him, offering herself. There is no roughness or force, and the audience is not supposed to be laughing at Elisa’s supposed meekness, or her desire to sleep with a non-human being. It’s sweet and sensual and, amazingly, silent.

Giles is a character who goes on a similar journey to Elisa throughout The Shape of Water, except that he finds out that the man he has a crush on is actually a monster, and not the other way around. In exploring Giles’ homosexuality, the film, again, does not play this for laughs except when we are supposed to be laughing along with Giles. There’s a lot of sorrow to his own tale–his desire to “fuck more” in his younger days, as well as his assertion that he was born “either too early or too late” portrays him as a man with regrets who feels as if he missed a lot of opportunities within his life. It’s a stark contrast to Elisa’s fiery, passionate journey: Giles discovers that his crush, a man he probably romanticised and idealised, is racist and homophobic, and definitely not interested. Giles is left alone again, shut out from the heteronormative society in which he lives.

Whilst some might hear The Shape of Water’s synopsis and laugh at the idea of ever trying to take a monster romance movie seriously, the film plays the relationship in a way that’s so soft and sweet that it’s hard not to be rooting for the two lovers, even if one of them has webbed feet. The Shape of Water is the first film that I’ve watched in a long time where I feel as if the two main characters who were supposed to be in love actually were in love, even considering the relatively short time their relationship has to grow and develop. It’s a film that handles sexuality–particularly female sexuality–in a refreshing way that favours warmth and consent over force and male pleasure. Both Elisa and the creature are on equal ground, and this means that their love-making is sweet and emotional, as opposed to awkward or unwanted. And if the cast and crew can do all this in a movie where one of the two protagonists is a literal fish monster, what’s every other romantic movie’s excuse?

The Shape of Water releases in the UK on the 14th of February 2018.