Dreams of a Life
If you went missing, would anyone come looking?
★★★★ Time Out
★★★★ Total Film
★★★★ Empire
Synopsis:
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.
REVIEWS
“An authentic moving portrait of a forgotten life” – Indie Wire
“This documentary about a mysterious woman who had been dead in her bedsit for three years before she was found is heartbreaking – and a salutary reminder to keep our loved ones close” – The Guardian
“A documentary about Joyce Vincent, who lay dead on her sofa for three years before being found, is a searingly powerful examination of modern loneliness”– The Guardian
“Carol Morley’s sadly fascinating Dreams of a Life, which plays like a more artful cousin to TV’s true-crime docs, slowly assembles a portrait of Vincent, unfolding in a way that should earn fans in its niche theatrical run” – The Hollywood Reporter
