Dreams of Life - review - Film - Arts

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Her name was Joyce Vincent and Carol Morley's docu-drama tries to piece together not what actually happened but the flavour of her life.

This is not a piece of film journalism, since Morley doesn't try to find Vincent's three sisters, nor does she examine what police records there were. After placing adverts in newspapers, on the internet and even on London taxis, she limits herself to testimony, often confused, from Joyce's former friends, lovers and colleagues. She also dramatises Joyce herself (the young Joyce is played by Alix Luka-Cain and the older woman is Zawe Ashton) and her family.

What results is an impressionistic study of how the big city can envelope a person until there is almost nothing left except what bits and pieces acquaintances can remember.

Some viewers will want more than this, but Dreams of a Life leaves its mark simply by making us wonder what really happened and why. This Joyce seems as if she is pretty near the original - a beautiful young woman who appeared outgoing but whom nobody, not even those who loved her, really got to know. Had she been abused by her father as a child and left in a state of fundamental depression, leading to suicide? Did she die of an asthma attack? Or was she murdered? A combination of the first two solutions to the grim puzzle seems the most likely.

We will never know. But Morley's film makes us care. It's a different, risky kind of investigation but a valid one.

Dreams Of A Life
Cert: 12A