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Dreams of a Life

Release Date 06 Jan 2012 16 May 2012

  • User rating
  • Currently 3/5 Stars.
  • Critic rating
  • Currently 4/5 Stars.

  80% of raters want to see this movie

Certificate: 12A

Genre: Drama | Documentary

Would anyone miss you? Nobody noticed when Joyce Vicent died in her bedsit above a shopping mall in North London in 2003. Her body wasn't discovered for three years, surrounded by Christmas presents she had been wrapping, and with the TV still on. Newspaper reports offered few details of her life -- not even a photograph. Interweaving interviews with imagined scenes from Joyce's life is not only a portrait of Joyce but a portrait on London in the eighties -- the city, music and race. It is a film about urban lives, contemporary life, and how, like Joyce, we are all different things to different people. It is about how little we may ever know each other, but nevertheless, how much we can love.

Cast:
Zawe Ashton | Jonathan Harden | Daren Elliot Holmes

Writers:
Carol Morley

Producers:

Directors:
Carol Morley

  • Critic rating
  • Currently 4/5 Stars.

Movies.ie Critic Review

In January 2006, the corpse of 38-year old Joyce Vincent was found in her London bedsit, and it was soon discovered that she had lain there for three years. With the TV still on. And her body disintegrated so much into the carpet that Joyce could only be identified by her dental records. With little known about her at the time, documentary filmmaker Carol Morley tracks down those who knew Joyce Vincent, and discovers a popular, attractive and flirtatious would-be singer who never stayed in one place for very long, moving on to a new job, and a new lover, without leaving too much of a trace. Just why that was is discussed by former lovers, friends and co-workers, whilst her life is reconstructed, both through archive photos and by actors.

THE VERDICT: On April 27th, 2011, Playboy playmate and B-movie queen Yvette Vickers was found at her Benedict Canyon home, the 82-year old believed to have been dead for close to a year. That someone can slip away and nobody notices is a chilling thought, but, as people lead more insular and isolated lives (thanks, internet!), lonesome deaths can hardly be all that surprising. Not that there aren’t many moments to ponder in Carol Morley’s fascinating documentary drama, the moving target that is a beautiful woman proving just as out of reach in death as in life. So, you know, let that be a lesson to all you hot chicks out there – settle for the next wide-eyed gimp who proposes. Just make him promise to check your pulse every morning. 

Review by Paul Byrne 

  • Avg User rating
  • Currently 3/5 Stars.

User Reviews

    • Currently 3/5 Stars.

    Onionhead

    The film is an amazing production as the director, Morley, combines documentary style interviews, which flow naturally from the subjects, combined with a fictional account of Joyce's life informed by the interviews but fictionalised at other points. What is even more remarkable is that Morley painstakingly unearthed all the interviewees, pictures, film footage, sound recordings etc as none were available to the authorities in the aftermath of Joyce's death. The film also features Morley's montage of Joyce's time line from birth to death and what she discovers of events along the way. Interestingly Joyce's family did not want to be involved with the making of the film, wishing to remain anonymous. Amongst the many things that Joyce Carol Vincent did in her life was to meet Nelson Mandela and the film ends with actual footage of Mandela addressing a small musical gathering at which Joyce was present and we see her on film. She was an unusual person, possessed of talents most of which were never realised. As one interviewee remarks (her ex-boyfriend Al) she never seemed to have a future and did not seem fully invested in life. The title is a play on both Joyce sleepwalking through life as well as the dream imagined for the viewer of Joyce's life. Joyce sings during the film a song the refrain of which is 'my smile is a frown upside down'. She really reminds me of the man in Stevie Smith's poem 'Not Waving But Drowning', who "was much further out than you thought and not waving but drowning ... I was much too far out all my life ..."

    • Currently 3/5 Stars.

    mart

    Impressively assembled and exhaustively researched, this is a grimly fascinating, deeply upsetting documentary-slash-mystery that raises some uncomfortable questions

    • Currently 4/5 Stars.

    filmbuff2011

    Dreams Of A Life is an absorbing and at times very moving docudrama about the life of Joyce Carol Vincent - a vivacious young Londoner who skeletal remains were discovered in her bedsit some 3 years after her death. She lived in a busy shopping district, the TV was still on, wrapped Christmas presents were beside her... and yet she just disappeared off the grid and everyone she knew seemed to have forgotten about her - or did she forget about them? The story alone is quite remarkable, but it requires a careful pair of hands to dig deeper. Thankfully, director Carol Morley has assembled a series of candid interviews with the friends and lovers who knew her... but the overall impression that the audience is left with is that nobody truly knew her. Crucially, her family declined to be interviewed and I think the true answer lies somewhere in the relationship with her family. This is a really good film and it certainly makes you think about your own place in the world. Definitely well worth seeing.

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