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Yesterday we told you how Guillermo Del Toro’s romantic gothic fairy-tale, The Shape of Water, had debuted at the Venice Film Festival to a slew of rave reviews. Well, buoyed by the positive response, Fox Searchlight Pictures have released the first clip from the movie, which you can now watch below.
It’s only brief, but it shows what looks like the first encounter between Elisa (Sally Hawkins) and the mysterious tank dwelling amphibious character, known only as ‘the asset’ (played by Doug Jones, the physical actor behind Hellboy‘s Abe Sapian, and Pan’s Labyrinth‘s nightmare inducing Pale Man), with whom she shares a classic forbidden romance. We also get another look at Michael Shannon’s potential villain, Strickland, along with accompanying oppressive bad guy orchestral score, provided by Alexandre Desplat (Argo, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button). As you’d expect from Del Toro, the sets look spectacular, and lived in, with rusted metal meeting in dark, invisible corners.
The Shape of Water appears to be another example of what Del Toro does best; an other-worldly fairytale set against the backdrop of war. On this occasion its 1963 Cold War America, where the focus of the story is a lonely janitor (Hawkins), who works in a top-secret government laboratory with her colleague Zelda (Octavia Spencer). The two of them discover a secret experiment, which changes Elisa’s life forever.
Co-written by Guillermo Del Toro and Vanessa Taylor (Game of Thrones), and also starring Academy Award nominee Richard Jenkins (Burn After Reading, Bone Tomahawk), and Golden Globe nominee Michael Stuhlbarg (A Simple Man, Steve Jobs). Fox Searchlight Pictures will release The Shape of Water into UK cinemas on December 4th, before swimming onto US screens on December 8th.
Before then, you can watch the stunning trailer on repeat right here.
Image: 20th Century Fox
