DREAMS OF A LIFE (2011)
Directed and Written
by Carol Morley
Dogwoof Productions,
95 minutes, not-rated
*
When is a mystery not a mystery, a documentary not a
documentary, and a feature-length film not worthy of being one? I can think of
quite a few cases for each scenario, but few combine all three drawbacks with
the prosaic dullness of Dreams of a Life.
The film’s hook intrigues. In 2006, British authorities
broke into the North London apartment of Joyce Carol Vincent to evict her.
Vincent, a vivacious and gorgeous young woman of West Indian descent, was
discovered sitting on her sofa with the TV playing, and surrounded by a pile of
Christmas presents. Or, more accurately, her putrefying bodily fluids were
found puddled on the rug beneath her skeleton. Forensics revealed she had died
in 2003. Writer/director Carol Morley sought to unravel how a popular and
intelligent young woman in her twenties who seemingly had many friends and had
held down responsible jobs could die alone in her flat without anyone noticing
or making inquiries. Joyce had even made a few records, so somebody should have
noticed, right? Quite a mystery, yes? No.
We learn in the first ten minutes that there is no mystery; Joyce
was a serial groupie who latched onto people for short periods, vanished, and moved
onto a new group (or lover). After 15 minutes we discover that Joyce was not
quite what she claimed to be–not nearly so well educated, posh, or well
connected as she let on. Had Morley stopped there, she might have had a tight
little short film that could have created a minor stir in independent film
festivals. Instead, she drags out the non-drama for another 80 minutes. Former
partners, coworkers, club acquaintances, and musical collaborators go before
the camera to tell us what I’ve already related. Rule one of a documentary is
that it must record and document something.
But Morley’s subjects have so little to say that she engages in two
hard-to-overlook sins: she allows those behind the camera to repeat the same
non-revealing items ad infinitum, and she supplements their lack of revelation
with partially imagined re-creations using professional actors. (Zawe Ashton
stands in for Joyce, Cornell John for her father, and so on.) Is this even a
documentary once the corpse is collected? The threads of Joyce’s life are so
few and the story so thin that Morley had to do something to get an hour and a
half of usable footage, but the film feels like a two-page undergrad paper
padded to five.
I don’t mean to sound callous, but Joyce Vincent left behind
very little except an inflated view of her own musical talent and a penchant
for conning people. Her egoism was probably a mask for deep insecurity, but the
key word is “probably.” We don’t know and we don’t find out. Her life was short
and tragic–sad, but hardly distinct from other short and tragic lives. This
film wants us to grapple with the question of what we really know about another
person. That’s a worthy query, but if the answer in any individual case is “not
much,” there’s nothing left to say. So call it a wrap.--Rob Weir
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