The Shape of Water is a love story set in the 1960s. The lovers are a mute cleaning lady and an amphibian man who has a muscled torso but also scales and gills. On paper, it sounds preposterous. On screen, it is poetry. Guillermo del Toro’s film is fantastical, gorgeous, nutty and so moving that I wept.

Guillermo Del Toro has always made sensationally strange movies, but with this one it is as if he, like his heroine, is finally unafraid to be beautiful.

Denuded of that sense of layered luminosity that we have seen in Guillermo del Toro’s best works (Pan’s Labyrinth and Crimson Peak), The Shape Of Water would have been a classic children’s fairytale if the Beauty did not have the hots for the Beast. Bathtubs will never be a place of innocent contemplation again.

So watch the film, be awed by the painterly visual palette it offers, be swept away by the emotions it renders. There are unfortunately a few cuts imposed by our beloved CBFC but don’t let that deter you from experiencing a magical time at the cinema.

Del Toro hits a cinematic nerve in capturing an enduring love for the oddball, the beauty in the bizarre and, most importantly, reminding what it’s like to have what one wished for since a kid — a happy ending.

The star, however, is Del Toro’s direction that constrains your chest in anticipation of the inevitable and simultaneously also swells your heart, reiterating that love does transcend everything, and in this case even species. And like the shape of water, it is all around us when submerged in it.

While the premise isn’t exactly anything new, it’s del Toro’s masterful execution that makes this film stand out.

That The Shape of Water has 13 Oscar nominations indicates that the love story largely floats above the problems with the film — buoyed to a large extent by a timorous, luminous, powerful Sally Hawkins.

It’s a film only Guillermo del Toro could’ve made – full of injustice, but also, crucially, decency. It deserves each of its 13 Oscar nominations.

More than its visual brilliance, what captivates you the most is Del Toro’s ability to capture the minutiae of his ordinary characters’ everyday life. An unlikely amalgamation of supernatural, spiritual and sci-fi elements, The Shape of Water at heart, is a simple tale of hope and empathy. It rebuilds your faith in love, which isn’t and shouldn’t be defined by a certain shape or form.

It’s hard to define The Shape of Water — after all, does it really have a shape? del Toro uses it as an allegory to love. It isn’t something that can be contained within a shape. Instead allow love, and this film, to envelop you like water. I’m going with four out of five for this incredible film.