Review of Dreams of a Life (2011) by Nick D — 20 Dec 2011

This disturbed me. Late 2006, Wood Green authorities broke into a flat with a repossession order and discovered the body of Joyce Vincent that had laid there for 3 years still watching the TV. She was only 38 at the time. Reporters and police at the time could gather very little about her life. Over the past few years, Carol Morley has collated many facts about her and with interviews with people from her past, and presented a portrait of an attractive, gregarious, talented young singer of mixed race, whose mother brought her up with elocution and deportment. She was known to have mixed with people in financial and music businesses, and had potential to create a life that she may have needed, but seemed to keep them at arms length. Which begs the question; how does somebody in the 21st century, with friends and family who obviously care about her, slip through the cracks so easily? My problem with this film is that the dramatisations sometimes seem a bit laboured and are distracting, however, the situation is so sad it grips you. I don't think it's by chance that this was released at Christmas. It made me want to go through my old phone books to check on people I haven't spoken to for the past decade!

Alot of the immediate questions about the case are answered, but it raises some new ones (where were her sisters in all this?) which may never get answers. Stylistically, not brilliant, but a moving documentary non the less.