Review: The Shape of Water (2017)

* * * *
Director: Guillermo del Toro
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Shannon, Michael Stuhlbarg

Tale as old as time, song as old as rhyme, beauty and the beast. There's nothing new about stories of women seeing past the beastly exterior of a monster and falling in love with the soul that exists beneath the surface - movies called "Beauty and the Beast" are, at this point, a subgenre in and of themselves - but a filmmaker as creative as Guillermo del Toro, who is dedicated to mixing the sinister with the beautiful, leaving you at once enchanted and unsettled, is able to make an old formula feel fresh. The Shape of Water is a wonderful fairy tale for adults, impeccably put together on a visual level, masterfully unfolded on a narrative level, and built around one great leading performance and four great supporting performances. If you only see one movie this year about a woman falling in love with a fish man, make it The Shape of Water.

Review: Blue Jasmine (2013)

* * *
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Cate Blanchett, Sally Hawkins, Bobby Canavale, Alec Baldwin

A Streetcar Named Desire by way of the Bernie Madoff scandal by way of Woody Allen. The story beats are familiar, but nothing can take away from the bravura performance by Cate Blanchett at the film's centre. As a woman already beyond the verge of a mental breakdown, she delivers a fascinating, sometimes terrifying, performance that can easily be considered one of the best Allen has ever captured, and a formidable contender for this year's Best Actress statue. The film around her isn't quite as strong as it could be, but Blanchett's performance is so mesmerizing that it very nearly makes up for the unevenness of the other elements.

Unsung Performances: Sally Hawkins, Happy-Go-Lucky

When it comes to awards, comedy is never taken as seriously as drama. We forget sometimes that it takes as much skill to make an audience laugh as to make them cry, and we lavish praise of those actors who jump through emotional hoops, leaving more understated, less flashy performances in the shadows. When Happy-Go-Lucky was released in 2008, it garnered a few awards for lead Sally Hawkins (including a Golden Globe) but she was left out on Oscar nomination day. To be sure, there was some pretty stiff competition in the Best Actress category that year (Kate Winslet, the winner for The Reader, Meryl Streep for Doubt, Anne Hathaway for Rachel Getting Married, Melissa Leo for Frozen River, and Angelina Jolie for Changeling), but I think Hawkins' performance is one that resonates and will stand the test of time.

Review: Made In Dagenham (2010)

* * * 1/2
Director: Nigel Cole
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins, Miranda Richardson

“Issue” movies are a staple of the cinematic landscape, but they can be difficult to pull off. There is, after all, a fine line between taking a subject seriously and presenting it in an overly earnest or reverent way. Nigel Cole’s Made In Dagenham finds the right tone, approaching the material sincerely but without drenching it in syrupy sentiment. The film pretty much came and went from theatres (at least on this side of the Atlantic), but it’s definitely worth a look and will hopefully find an audience now that it’s out on DVD.

Review: Happy-Go-Lucky (2008)

* * * *
Director: Mike Leigh
Starring: Sally Hawkins, Eddie Marsan

I see a lot of movies. I’m fortunate that a lot of those movies that I see are also quite good, though it’s still rare for me to see a movie that genuinely makes me feel better about the world around me. As I walked out of Happy-Go-Lucky, I felt really, really happy. It’s as simple as that. This movie enchanted me from its first minute and held me rapt right through to its last.

Happy-Go-Lucky comes from writer/director Mike Leigh and, like most of his films, it unfolds at a natural, life-like pace rather than at a pace driven by plot development. Its focus is more on character than plot, which can make it a little hard to describe but I’ll do my best. Poppy (Sally Hawkins in an absolutely delightful performance) is a perpetual optimist who would like nothing more than to see other people as happy as she herself is. Her upbeat attitude and her willingness to really listen to people make her perfect for her job as a grade school teacher and for her role as unofficial mediator between her two sisters.

At the other end of the spectrum the film gives us Scott (Eddie Marsan), Poppy’s driving instructor. Scott is a dark, angry man, full of prejudices ranging from racism to homophobia to general hatred of every other driver on the road. He and Poppy get off to a rough start immediately when he criticizes her choice of shoes (“I don’t look good in flats,” she explains. “I don’t care how you look,” he replies, already at the limit of his patience) and continue to clash over their very different outlooks on life. At first Poppy simply tries to get Scott to lighten up and then she tries to get him to open up and reveal the roots of his anger. These scenes manage to alternate easily between being funny (I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get into a car again without thinking, “En-ra-ha!”), scary and sad. It’s Poppy’s ability to navigate this complex and often volatile relationship that reveals the deeper shades of her character.

The success of this movie depends on the performance by Hawkins. In lesser hands, this character would have been totally insufferable, but Hawkins makes it work. I think the key is that Poppy’s sunny disposition is never made to seem like self-protective delusion or constructed facade; Poppy just is one of those “high on life” kind of people who can’t help but find something to smile about. It’s a winning performance and it’s surrounded on all sides by other great performances. From Marsan as the tightly-wound and obviously wounded driving instructor to Alexis Zegerman as Poppy’s best friend and roommate, the film is populated with very skilled and naturalistic acting.

Mike Leigh’s trademark is that his work comes largely from improvisation, but that isn’t to say that the final product ever lacks control or guidance. The film doesn’t simply meander from adventure to adventure; it has a nice, natural flow as it follows Poppy through various aspects of her life from her job to her driving lessons, from outings with friends and a trip to visit one of her sisters, and a couple of segments which take place in a flamenco class taught by a hilariously passionate instructor. With Leigh steering the story it manages a nice balance of elements and the end result is a film that is charming and compelling.