LOS ANGELES – Composer Alexandre Desplat’s music for “The Shape of Water” has won the Academy Award for best original score.

He thanked his mother, who he said turns 90 this year and “she’s Greek, by the way”, and “Shape of Water” director Guillermo del Toro.

Desplat’s parents, (French father, Greek mother), met while both were studying in the United States at the University of California, Berkeley, and then they moved to Paris where he was born and raised.

Against all odds, love won out at the 90th Academy Awards.

Guillermo del Toro’s lavish, full-hearted monster romance “The Shape of Water” swam away with best picture at an Oscar ceremony flooded by a sense of a change for a movie business confronting the post-Harvey Weinstein era. The ceremony, held Sunday at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles, exorcised some demons — like last year’s envelope fiasco — and wrestled with other, deeper problems in Hollywood, like gender equality and diversity.

“The Shape of Water,” which came in with 13 nods, took a leading four awards, including best production design, best score and best director for del Toro. The Cold War-set movie, about a mute woman and a captive fish-man, is del Toro’s Technicolor ode to outsiders of all kinds — and species.

“The greatest thing that art does, and that our industry does, is erase the lines in the sand,” said del Toro, accepting the best director award.

Alexandre Desplat, winner of the award for best original score for “The Shape of Water”, poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Alexandre Desplat, winner of the award for best original score for “The Shape of Water”, poses in the press room at the Oscars on Sunday, March 4, 2018, at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)