Review of Dreams of a Life (2011) by Kenneth B — 08 Jul 2012

Okay so this seemed like it had the potential for an interesting documentary. It concerns the death of a young London woman who reportedly died in her flat with the TV on whilst wrapping Christmas presents. It takes form of a one side of a set of interviews with reconstructions of various parts of Joyce Vincent's life.

The problem is that there is no insight other than the quite feeble reconstruction edited in with even more feeble interviews with a group of people who knew her at some point in her life, although seemingly not very well. All they can posit are vague theories and speculations over relatively obscure events within her life. It is that although this girl died in quite a remarkable manner seemingly nothing else was of great note which means long parts of the film are without note. The interviewees tell uninteresting anecdotes and lack any genuine insight but so too does the interviewer, or so it seems, because she clearly isn't probing too deep into the subject matter. Despite the research she has done, which seems to be thorough, there is all too little analysis, it merely scrapes the surface. This film answers nothing and the questions that it raises are hardly compelling.