Funny how bobbing for eels never caught on. Actually, it isn’t really bobbing for them which we see people thrilled to be doing at a fair in 1993’s Anchoress. Instead, they are all too happy to frantically reach for them in a large barrel. Whoever finally grabs one wins a hand mirror. That kind of thing was probably the most cherished item a commoner could aspire to have in the 14th century.
This fair is happening at the village church, where people have come from far away to seek the counsel of the anchoress who has recently been interred there. A young woman of marrying years (Natalie Morse) volunteered to be sealed in a tiny room added to an outside wall of the building, after having visions of the Virgin Mary.
The priest (Christopher Eccleston) initially has doubts, but those seem to disappear quickly. I know I was curious about her true intentions much longer after he was. This is a massive sacrifice she is making, and I wondered how thoroughly she had considered all the things she would be missing.
At least she evaded the attentions of the local lord (Gene Bervoets) who has been hovering. Admittedly, that alone makes the possibility of being permanently imprisoned in a tiny room more appealing. Instead, he simply shifts his focus to her younger sister (Brenda Bertin), whom he takes to the altar.
But life for Morse is even worse than I thought it would be. Eccleston frowns on the extent and frequency of her interaction with visitors, and is especially upset by her touching and being touched by them.
And Morse thrives on tactile sensation. The high-contrast black-and-white photography lingers almost fetishistically over various deeply textured objects she runs her fingers over. That sense of touch extends to a sensuality of which she seemed to be previously unaware. In one scene, she fingers a hole a hole in the wall so suggestively that I might have been more comfortable if we saw her doing the real thing.
Sex hangs over everything in this film, but not in a salacious manner. One moment has the village women kneading dough at a communal oven, where one of them has baked a loaf shaped like a wang. If there’s one thing I learned from this picture, it is erotic baked goods were invented about half a millennium earlier than I would have guessed.
But the moment which most surprised me is Morse’s mother (Toyah Willcox) apparently doing the nasty with a randy goat. At least, that’s the best I can figure out happened, judging from the rather abstract images we see from the perspective of her spying husband (Pete Postlethwaite). I guess any way to get your rocks off back then without getting pregnant…
Willcox has the most interesting character in a film with several of them. She is the closest thing the village has to a doctor, taking care of such ailments as their intestinal parasites and venereal diseases. Of course, a woman with that expertise will be regarded as a witch if public sentiment should turn against her, which it inevitably will. The image which will stay with the me the longest from watching this is her initial confusion over the loud voices she’s hearing, and that confusion instantly changing to sheer terror as she realizes the angry mob could only be coming for her.
I don’t believe I have seen this actress in anything before, so I was surprised to learn she is also a popular singer/songwriter in the UK. She is also married to legendary guitarist Robert Fripp, best known for King Crimson and his work with Bowie. Given all that, it was twice as startling to see her really taking a piss right on the ground as a direct affront to Eccleston. That’s definitely sends a stronger message than simply flipping the bird.
Anchoress is very arty and artificial, so I’m surprised it clicked with me as well as it did. Elements of it reminded me favorably of the work of Jean Cocteau. Best of all, it sticks the landing with a series of events in the third act I could never have anticipated. In welcome bonus features, writer/director Chris Newby informs us he only thought of the final scene after a visit to a cave system. I think it is a testament to this movie that I assumed he always had this conclusion in mind, and developed the rest of the script to work up to it.
Dir: Chris Newby
Starring Natalie Morse, Gene Bervoets, Toyah Willcox, Pete Postlethwaite, Christopher Eccleston
Watched as part of Severin’s blu-ray box set All the Haunts Be Ours: A Compendium of Folk Horror