Answering Your Biggest Shape of Water Question: Does She F*ck the Fish-Man?

The Shape of H2o. Photograph: Twentieth Century Fox Film

As you might be able to tell from the headline, this mail spoils one item attribute of The Shape of H2o. Just don't worry, it reveals zilch else.

The Shape of Water , Guillermo del Toro'southward new pic most a mute Sally Hawkins falling in love with a fish-man in 1960s Baltimore, is an Oscar contender for a reason: It's a loving ode to outsiders told with care, commitment, and lavish period item. Withal, if y'all're unsure about whether yous want to run into the flick, there's probably one effect lurking in the darkest depths of your listen. With apologies to the foremost poet of our age, everyone keeps asking me if she fucks the fish-homo. Buddy, I'm here to give you an reply.

(Don't read any further unless y'all actually want to know.)

Okay, so: The outset hint that del Toro isn't afraid to become there comes in the picture show's opening montage, which is devoted to Hawkins'southward character's daily routine — a difficult-boiled egg, a soothing bath, and vigorous masturbation. This is not one of those grey, downtrodden outcasts we meet so often in movies. This is a woman with a healthy lust for life. If she meets and falls in dearest with a fish-man, you're damn correct she's going to exist tempted to find out what he'southward working with downstairs.

Cut to halfway through the movie, after Hawkins and the fish-man (played by frequent del Toro collaborator Doug Jones) take shared an intense emotional moment. The time is right: Hawkins fills a room with water, takes off her apparel, and the new couple share an aquatic encompass. (Unlike his heroine, the filmmaker doesn't shell effectually the bush.) But del Toro discreetly cuts away earlier things get as well explicit, the cinematic equivalent of a coyly raised countenance. At the moment it seems like a definitive answer to the do-they-or-don't-they question may elude us.

However! In the very next scene, those of united states who are intensely curious about the physical logistics of a adult female–fish-man human relationship get what we came for. (Not literally.) Hawkins's co-worker, played past Octavia Spencer, knows about the brewing relationship, and similar whatever practiced audience stand up-in, she presses Hawkins for details. Nosotros don't get a whole lot, but what nosotros get is enough: They definitely boned. Or gilled, or whatever. How is that possible, you may ask, since as far as nosotros've seen, the fish-man has no penis. Don't worry, the movie is manner ahead of you. By way of demonstration, Hawkins puts her hands together flat, and and then flips them around then that ii of her fingers are protruding. (It'due south kind of like that gross joke your friends did in elementary schoolhouse.) Anyway, the point is, the fish-man has a penis subconscious somewhere up there, and boy does he know how to utilise it.

"I was quite curious because that was a new one for us," Jones, who had worked on 5 previous movies with del Toro without ever getting a sexual activity scene, told me. "But it is tasteful and it is beautiful. I know the sexiness has been honed in on in the printing a piddling scrap. [Editor's note: Sorry, Doug.] But it'south not a story about sex at all. Information technology'southward a story well-nigh love and finding it in unforeseen places. To notice ourselves vulnerable and naked in front of each other was part of the beautiful tale that Guillermo was telling."

But yeah, she totally has sex with the fish-human being.

In Shape of Water, Does She Accept Sexual practice with the Fish-Human being?