Dreams Of A Life

Synopsis: In 2006 an attractive single thirtysomething English black woman, Joyce Carol Vincent was found dead in her bedsit in the north London suburb of Haringey. Apparently she’d been dead for three years, slumped in front of her television set, which was still on, and surrounded by Christmas presents which she had been wrapping. So little was left of her that it was impossible to determine a cause of death.

Dreams Of A Life is less about trying to work out how and why Joyce Vincent died than a grimly revealing portrait of English (or perhaps any) urban society

Morley interviews some of Joyce’s ex-boyfriends, friends and colleagues and based on their accounts of her, stages dramatized reconstructions of her life, with actor Zawe Ashton playing her as an adult. One can’t help but think of Errol Morris’s similar approach, but Morley does not work her material in as interesting ways. We get a lot of conflicting opinions from people who knew her which together suggests the inner sadness of  what to all intents and purposes was an attractive and intelligent young woman but there are lots of gaps in the timeline, particularly of the last eighteen months or so of Joyce’s life whilst none of her family members were willing to be interviewed and one can’t help but wish Morley had been more resourceful in creating a portrait of her subject.

Although we end up none the wiser about how and why Joyce died than when we started, what emerges is a telling portrait of the mindset of her so-called friends. That they all seem to be pretty much in denial about their I’m-Alright-Jack complacency (most of them affect a polite wordly-wise wistfulness about Joyce’s demise, only a former boyfriend succumbs to emotion) it only confirms the suspicion that it is this ingrained humbug that really killed Joyce. It would kill anyone who for one reason or another felt themselves an outsider as Joyce evidently did. 

If nothing else, Dreams Of A Life serves as a wake-up call for us all to take better care of each other than we do.

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