If you’re looking to the movies for a bit of romantic escapism, even inspiration, you need look no further than two recent features—vastly different from each other in a lot of ways—but both just as disarmingly intimate and moving in effect, and both seeking to touch upon the diverse possibilities of desire. The first is Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, a lush period piece that oozes artistry and fairytale extravagance; and the second is Italian-Algerian director Luca Guadagnino’s achingly personal Call Me By Your Name, based on a novel of the same name by André Aciman, which makes for a more slice-of-life, but no less enchanting, experience. Indeed, that’s the word that comes repeatedly to mind when going over these two masterpieces—they’re “experiences” rather than films, their pleasures and pains not just to be observed but keenly felt and internalised by viewers.

Both stories are centred on protagonists with rich inner lives: Elisa (Sally Hawkins) is a cleaner at a top-secret government research facility in 1960s Baltimore, and her inability to speak has restricted her social interactions considerably—not that she minds much. A creature of habit, she takes joy in repetitive patterns: Wake up, boil some eggs, pleasure herself in the bathtub, and check in with neighbour and best friend Giles (Richard Jenkins) before heading off to work. Seventeen-year-old Elio (Timothée Chalamet), meanwhile, lives with his parents in a little corner of northern Italy. The year is 1983 and this is the sort of place where summers go on forever—Elio fills his time reading books, playing music and adventuring around the sun-dappled countryside with the local kids.

These contented existences are soon thrown into turmoil, though. For Elisa, what sets it off is the appearance of a new “asset” in the laboratory: US armymen, under the command of the stone-faced, stone-hearted Colonel Strickland (Michael Shannon), have captured a member of a species here to fore unknown to mankind—an “Amphibian Man” (Doug Jones)—in the rivers of South America. Even as Strickland and his men get set to slice the creature apart and learn what they can before the Soviets can get their hands on it—this is, after all, right in the midst of the Cold War—-Elisa finds herself increasingly drawn to the lonely figure trapped inside the tank, and it to her. They begin to communicate, and bond, over hard-boiled eggs and hand gestures and old records. But time is running out, and Elisa must take some bold—and very illegal—steps, if she is to keep her new friend from the dissecting table. 

In Elio’s case, his unravelling corresponds with the arrival of grad student Oliver (Armie Hammer), who is staying with the family over the summer to work for Elio’s dad (Michael Stuhlbarg). Elio initially bristles at Oliver’s flippant ways—out of place in the quieter, more civilised Perlman household—but eventually he, and we, come to see that the reaction was more to conceal his instant interest in the older man. As the days pass, the two find themselves pushed together by mutual attraction, and pulled apart by fear of being found out, and together again, and back apart—in what amounts to a deliciously delicate dance of suppressed desire. 

Despite its larger-than-life, sci-fi fantasy premise, Shape of Water maintains a steady gaze on the people—or beings—at the centre of the narrative. In fact, it almost feels like a bid for redemption; in del Toro’s last film, 2015’s Crimson Peak, so much attention had been lavished on the production design that the characters had suffered. But here, the balance is just right: While we can marvel at the wondrous world of del Toro’s imaginationand brought to life by Dan Laustsen’s cinematography—a world both time-specific and timeless all at once, done up in every conceivable shade of green, and with references to the Amphibian Man’s watery realm, and del Toro’s own vintage film and musical inspirations, scattered all about—it’s all in service of the story. The pictorial details underline the evolving dynamics between Elisa and the creature—how they open up to each other both physically and emotionally—so convincing that you’re ready to toss away the confounding logistics of the inter-species coupling. 

It’s a similar kind of quiet scrutiny of characters’ state of mind, and a nuanced portrayal of their connections deepening, that we find in Call Me By Your Name. While here too, the cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom has a major role to play—you can almost feel the sun on your back, smell the ripeness of fruit and first love in the air, and find yourself falling into the languid, seductive summer time rhythms of the Italian countryside—the setting and pace function to compliment Elio and Oliver’s gradual discovery of and growing delight in each other’s company and bodies. Their interactions, however insignificant on the surface and negligible to others around them, are charged with sexual tension—every little touch on the arm, every glance, every little sentence dripping with meaning and possibility. And it’s that intense, almost obsessive focus on what’s passing between the two, particularly Elio’s awakening to his own sexuality, that makes Guadagnino’s film such a revelation. 

Although Guadagnino and writer Jamers Ivory avoid explicit references to the societal censure or legal milieu to do with homosexuality in the particular era or region in which the story is set—if anything, most of the people around Elio and Oliver seem to have quietly accepted, even approved, of them together—there is still a palpable sense of danger surrounding the couple. Indeed, as they waltz through empty night-time streets arm in arm, or lie together on a grassy river bank, we can’t help but fear for them, even when there is no visible threat, because we know what they’re up against. Besides which, the very fact that both instinctively know to keep their relationship a secret goes to show how deeply-internalised stigma can be. It’s a poignant way of portraying—without any grandiose speechifying—how that stigma forces so many to inflict such painful deceptions on others as well as themselves. Shape of Water, on its part, could be read as a similar paean to the multidimensional nature of sexuality, but it’s a touch more on-the-nose in comparison, though still very effective. 

Finally we come to the casting, on which point both films have outdone themselves. Hawkins is an absolute marvel, communicating with her eyes and face such complexity and depth of feeling that other actors would be hard-pressed to do with long-winded dialogues. And Jones, though decked out in a rubbery costume clearly based on that of the Creature from the Black Lagoon—one of del Toro’s key inspirations in making this film—manages to stay fairly expressive, offering Hawkins reliable company. Shape of Water also boasts some fantastic supporting work from Jenkins, Shannon and Octavia Spencer. As for Call Me By Your Name, I can’t really find the words to describe just how powerful a punch the young Chalamet packs here: It’s a magnificent show of skilled nuance and subtlety. Hammer is terrific, too, as are the rest of the extended cast, but this is Chalamet’s film through and through.

I hope you’ll watch both these films. But make sure to keep them at least a week apart—you’ll want to let them simmer in your minds a while, trust me.