DREAMS OF A LIFE - QUEERGURU

Joyce Carol Vincent was an enigma. A 38 year old British woman of Grenadian & Indian descent who was found dead in her messy bed-sit in a Housing Estate (Projects) located above North London’s busiest Shopping Centre in 2003 by Bailiffs’ who had come to evict her for not paying her rent. She had been dead for over three years and was lying on the sofa surrounded by Christmas gifts she has just wrapped, and with the Television Set still on. All that remained of her was her skeleton. This incidentally is not a piece of fiction, it sadly is real life.

The Coroner could only identify her by comparing her teeth to a holiday snap where she is smiling, and recorded her death with an Open Verdict. The local newspaper ran several stories on this somewhat bizarre story, and the Police mounted an investigation, as did the local MP, but all drew total blanks. Not one single person came forward ….albeit a relative or a friend ….and the mystery remained as how a very attractive woman’s life could mean so little to anyone that she should have been completely abandoned in this way.

Filmmaker Carol Morley however did succeed where all the others failed and by her painstaking research and some exemplary adroit sleuthing, she slowly pieced a picture together of who Joyce Vincent was. The key person she located was Martin a short stocky white man who had been her most significant boyfriend, even though the two seemed an unlikely couple. He, like other of her beaus, related how Joyce simply shared his life and his friends completely as she seemed to have none of her own.

What evolved from her former work colleagues and ex-room-mates was a portrait of a beautiful, articulate and intelligent woman. She spoke with a soft refined voice that she had acquired from childhood elocution lessons her mother had insisted on, and thus it came somewhat as a shock to everybody to discover that she actually had very little education at all. She was a something of a nomad, having shared apartments all over London through the years never really establishing any roots at all.

Ms Morley’s choice of revealing all the information she culled to Joyce’s ex colleagues as she interviewed then on camera was a great touch as they were all shocked to be faced with the reality that they knew such few real facts about her. The realisation that she had three sisters living in London (who refused to co-operate with the documentary) was tough enough to take on board, but when Ms Morley stated that when Joyce was hospitalized with stomach problems months before she died, for next of kin she had just written her Bank Manager’s name, which was heartbreaking.

That someone can fall off the radar like that is bad enough, but the realisation that no-one really cared enough to notice, speaks volumes about society today. And if that is not enough, the final scene after the credits roll, will send a real shudder down your spine.

I finally watched this, after waiting some months, on the plane ride up to Sundance, and even though my head is swimming with all the new movies I am starting to see, this one still haunts me. A terrible story beautifully told : get it on Netflix or Amazon

★★★★★★★★