Certificate: 15

Running Time: 123 mins

Star Rating: 4/5

MEXICAN filmmaker Guillermo del Toro recaptures the visual splendour and simmering menace of his Oscar-winning 2006 fantasy Pan's Labyrinth with a swoon-inducing reimagining of the Beauty And The Beast fairy tale set in 1962 Baltimore. The Shape Of Water is a gorgeous, erotically-charged love story, which empowers its richly drawn female characters to drive forward a tightly wound narrative and defeat prejudice in its myriad ugly forms.

The script, co-written by del Toro and Vanessa Taylor, doesn't sugar coat the central romance between a mute cleaning lady and a carnivorous merman. Lustrous period detail evokes an era of suffocating Cold War paranoia with aplomb, reflected in snappy dialogue like when one kind-hearted scientist argues that it would be unconscionable to vivisect any creature capable of understanding and emotions.

The story's "princess without a voice" is Elisa (Sally Hawkins). She works as a cleaner alongside sharp-tongued pal Zelda (Octavia Spencer) at Occam Aerospace Research Centre, a top-secret US government site. Colonel Richard Strickland (Michael Shannon) shepherds a large metal container into one of the laboratories. Inside is a beguiling aquatic creature (Doug Jones), which Strickland boasts he "dragged out of the river muck in South America". Elisa becomes emotionally attached to the merman, using sign language and music and they eventually fall in love.

The Shape Of Water delivers on the dizzying promise of 13 Oscar and 12 Bafta nominations, conjuring an intoxicating spell through mesmerising performances, sharp writing and del Toro's directorial daring. Hawkins is luminous and heartbreaking, speaking volumes without saying a word.