Dreams of a Life

2011 Directed by Carol Morley

Would anyone miss you?

A filmmaker sets out to discover the life of Joyce Vincent, who died in her bedsit in North London in 2003. Her body wasn't discovered for three years, and newspaper reports offered few details of her life - not even a photograph.

Zawe Ashton Alix Luka-Cain Cornell John Neelam Bakshi Frances Cooper Kelly Agbowu Sophia Leonie Nadia Di Mambro Diveen Henry Jay Simpson Daren Elliott Holmes Angela Sims Jonathan Harden Joanna Brookes Ki' Juan Whitton Robert Cawsey Polly Kemp Tom Nearney Lee Colley Pearl Smith Sarah Dulley Carol Morley

95 mins More details at IMDb TMDb Report this film

Popular reviews

Review by Hollie Horror ★★★ 2

It is not unheard of for a person to die, alone, and not be found for a few weeks at a time but..3 years is almost hard to believe, let alone fathom. At that point you have to question the electric company, building owner, neighbors, etc. What went so wrong in the last days of Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman not yet 40? A skeleton surrounded by neatly wrapped Christmas presents with a television on, illuminating death and keeping her remains company.
To some degree you want to ask the people interviewed in this documentary, friends from over the years, how could she be dead for so long without anyone knowing but it is a bit silly to put any…
Review by Mark Cunliffe ★★★★★

I first heard about the docu-film Dreams Of A Life on BBC1's Film 2011. The review instantly caught my attention at first because the recreations starred Zawe Ashton, the beautiful and stylish young actress from Channel 4's Fresh Meat, but then it hooked me in with the story; a true story about Joyce Carol Vincent, a woman whose body lay undiscovered in her bedsit for three years. I was immediately fascinated as to how such a tragedy could be allowed to occur. Sadly because my local cinema is shite, I didn't get to see the film until this week when it received its premiere on Channel 4. Now, having seen it, I know that it is a film that will…
Review by Adam Cook ★★★ 1

I remember reading about this documentary upon its theatrical release and for days afterwards I was unable to shake the story about how a dead woman’s body lay unnoticed for three years in a London bedsit. Journalists like to throw around phrases like ‘Broken Britain’ and the demise of society but you can’t quite comprehend how somebody could slip through the cracks in the way Joyce Vincent had.
Dreams of a Life attempts to piece together Joyce’s life via the people that knew her but over the course of ninety minutes you realise what a contradictory and elusive figure she really was. In truth it is the idea behind the documentary that is so haunting and thought provoking rather than…
Review by Ronan Doyle ★★★★½

Review from my VOD column "This Week on Demand".
One of the best documentaries of 2012 was, alas, also one of the most sorely underseen; Carol Morley’s Dreams of a Life is a film every bit as extraordinary and unbelievable as the tale it tells, that of vibrant young Londoner Joyce Vincent, whose decomposed body lay undiscovered in her home for three years after her death. There’s a raw, searing passion to Morley’s work as she—possessed by the need to tell this woman’s story—interviews Joyce’s friends and attempts to piece together this fragmented puzzle and discover how anyone could disappear from the world so unnoticed. It’s a film of almost uncomfortable power, the impassioned anger it inspires just as affecting…
Review by robyn ★★★½ 4

I remember when they reported this on the news but I had no idea what a life Joyce Vincent had led. Enthralling, and it feels respectful.
Review by Mark Cunliffe ★★★★★

Carol Morley's Dreams of a Life neatly brings together some of her past work and interests - namely the fill-in-the-blanks introspective autobiopic The Alcohol Years from 2000, and the macabre and eccentric interest for news stories as displayed in her 2001 short Everyday Something - to produce what is arguably the finest and most satisfying of her full length features.
Even on this rewatch, the story of Joyce Vincent is still incredibly affecting emotionally and brings up so many thought provoking questions. It's not a case of how she may have died (was it foul play or natural causes?), or just what Vincent may or may not have been hiding from friends and family (domestic abuse? Childhood abuse?), it's more…
Review by Chris Hormann ★★★★

No one that is alone should ever be forgotten.
This is a sad story of a life which disappears amongst the all-consuming hegemony of a big city and us that allow it to happen. It's frustrating at times as we seem on the cusp of discovery of what really happened to Joyce Vincent but are pulled back, like Joyce's friends to a state of not knowing. At the same time, director Carol Morley is clearly asking why these questions weren't asked when Joyce was alive - how could we not care enough to ask how she was, what she was doing? As an audience, we share an element of guilt and that can be an uncomfortable truth.
Review by Melody ★★½ 1

It's taken me years to get around to seeing this because, despite how interesting it sounded, the synopsis alone was enough to depress the f**k out of me. I'm painfully aware of how long it would take for anyone to notice sometimes were I to suddenly die in my sleep or something - if it can happen to someone as apparently vivacious as Joyce then it's practically just a matter of "when" for someone like me.
Honestly, I'm not sure there's anything in the film quite so compelling as that basic story, of someone dying alone and not being missed for 3 years until someone wanted money. The bulk of the movie is speculation by "friends" and acquaintances who clearly…
Review by Doug Dillaman ★★★

Four hours shorter than if it was made today, probably, but the limits of the recon budget still make it feel like it's stretching for feature length. But also, perhaps, it's just the unknowable, desperately sad void at the centre. You assume certain things about somebody who's found in their apartment dead for three years, and what I was braced for was one thing, and what I got was another - like preparing for a collision and getting knifed. Whether RASHOMON as directorial inquest is a noble endeavour or grotty voyeurism, I'm still not sure, but it does seem calibrated to extend the parameters of our empathy, and is modestly successful on those terms, even if it's manipulations are overly broad at points.
Review by sadiemay ★

It’s only getting a generous one star because it was entertaining, but I kind of resent the fact that I was entertained. The overly dramatised depiction of Joyce’s life made it feel that by the end of the film I didn’t really know anything about Joyce... like I get it, it’s a film about other people’s construction of this woman. Like truly I do get it. But it felt more so like the conversations shown on screen should have happened in private between the interviewees, not made into a documentary for us to all gawp at. A half hearted attempt to salvage Joyce’s identity and separate her from being ‘that’ woman ultimately constructs an equally unnecessary depiction. I think the…
Review by Jordan Beaumont Anderson ★★★★

You're born alone and you die alone and everything between is seen through gauze.
Review by Steven Sheehan ★★★★½

You will experience a myriad of emotions watching Zawe Ashton bring life to the spirit of the now deceased Joyce Vincent, not only through the interviews with friends and ex-work colleagues but also the feeling of intruding a little too much into a life that wanted to remain private.
Without question this will make you think of the people you have lost contact with either through time and distance or pure laziness. In a city like London, comprised of 8 million people, all of us with such high tech communication at our fingertips, the fact that a healthy woman can disappear from view for so long only to be discovered when a monetary demand is due, is something of a…

Recent reviews

Review by Chris Hammond ★★★

Pretty standard dramatised documentary about a very interesting subject.
Review by Calum Russell ★★★★

Fascinating documentary about a life lived, forgotten and regretfully mourned
Review by strawberrybitcj ★★★★

Whenever I think of Joyce Vincent, Eleanor Rigby starts playing in my head.
Review by raytea ★★★★½

This doc still haunts me to this day
Review by Stephen Hinton ★★★★★

Fascinating and incredibly powerful haunting portrait of a faded life that’s engagingly told by the people who knew her.
It will stay with you long after the credits roll.
Review by James Hamrick ★★★★

This documentary pretty incredibly brings this woman to life for you. Through the recounting from her friends and the re-enactments from the actors, you feel a real life materialize in front of you. The filmmaking is strong and you feel a real sense of narrative. My only big complaint is that the beginning really stresses the peculiarities of her death, from the seeming lack of proper investigation, to why she was able to be missing for so long, yet the documentary spends no time on any of this.
Review by pat ★★★

first thing first. 3 WHOLE FUCKING YEARS? there's so many how's to my question.
it's quite sad. made me even more scare of the loneliness.
also made me wonder what people would say about me when i die.
Review by Douglas Yannaghas ★★★

An insane true story with a sort of bland presentation.
Review by Sharys ★★

"Quiero decir, te gusta pensar que todo el mundo tiene a alguien, ya sabes, que se preocupa amablemente por ellos..." "...parecía extraño y bastante inusual que no había nadie pendiente de ella".
Lastimosamente siento que el documental no logró dar el enfoque adecuado. Siendo un caso que a todos nos impactó por su naturaleza bastante triste y trágica, siento que perdieron toda sensibilidad con las dramatizaciones y las especulaciones de las personas que alguna vez conocieron a Joyce Vincent. Creo mostraron un conjunto de ideas que todos tenían acerca de ella.
Review by Todd Enoch ★★★

2021 double-sized 52 years in 52 weeks challenge
A fascinating story, but the execution of the film didn't do it justice. The reenactment sections were jarring, and lack of participation from family left a gaping hole in the narrative.
Review by deeznutsiskino ★★

Edgar Wright said this was one of the hardest cries he’s ever at a film so I checked it out.
When you first start watching, it’s not what you would expect Edgar to watch - it has a relatively low production value, feeling like a BBC show rather than a fully funded documentary, but as the movie progresses you begin to realize this film is telling a story we never hear about. The director chose a unique way of telling the story. Interviews with the few people who ‘knew’ her are interspliced with acted out clips depicting Joyce; standard fare, but what I found interesting was the shots in which the actress portraying Joyce is shown watching and reacting to the modern day interviews. It’s a neat way of interconnecting reality with the movie, in a way that kind of reminded of 2018’s ‘American Animals’
Good film, didn’t cry surprisingly. I cry easy with content like this
Review by Ewan Tough ★★★★

Went into this knowing that Edgar Wright had described how soul crushing it is on Films to Be Burried With, and even then it hit like a tonne of bricks.
Such a haunting and tremendously sad story, and I think this documentary covers it in a way which does it as much justice as it can, given the inherent lack of evidence on what actually happened.