In 1329, a young girl, Christine Carpenter decides to become an Anchoress, a female hermit, enclosed in a small cell attached to the village church.
'Unless the person involved is very holy indeed, there is a degree of self-aggrandisement in sainthood. Chris Newby's 'Anchoress'. a film set in the Middle Ages, plays slyly with that notion in its story of a young woman who choses to be walled up for the rest of her life. As she sets the last stone of her tomb into place and fixes it with mortar, there is a sense of perfect happiness upon her face, and although it may be sanctity, it is also the look of a teenager who has, at last, gotten out from under the thumbs of her parents.'
Roger Ebert
BACK TO FILMS