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Upcoming monster love story 'The Shape of Water' is one of Guillermo del Toro's best

The film has that combination of the macabre and the innocent that zooms right into del Toro's wheelhouse.

VENICE - My first film of the Venice Film Festival showed at 8:30 a.m. Thursday (that would be 1:30 a.m. back home). Thankfully it was a keeper. Guillermo del Toro's The Shape of Water is a monster movie/love story that ranks with the director's best. It has that combination of the macabre and the innocent that zooms right into del Toro's wheelhouse. It's got a great bad guy (Michael Shannon as a vainglorious Cold Warrior), a great heroine (Sally Hawkins as a mute romantic who cleans a lab enshrouded with secrets), and a great creature, which kind of goes without saying on GDT territory. It's a generous-hearted fable with a tinge of grownup nastiness, rendered with the fluid visual style that makes del Toro a magician.