Dealing with the loss of a loved one can be hard enough without having to navigate being literally pulled back into your past memories together. But that’s exactly what Lucy Boynton’s character Harriet faces in new romance drama, The Greatest Hits.

In the film, Harriet finds art imitating life when she discovers certain songs can transport her back in time – literally pulling her back into old memories. While she relives the past, journeying back into romantic moments with her late boyfriend, her time-travelling collides with a new love interest in the present.

As she explores the tangled emotional connection between music and memory, Harriet wonders if she can change the past, and more importantly, if she even should.

We meet Harriet two years into her grieving her boyfriend, Max, who passed away in a car accident. She’s learned that whenever she listens to a song that she and her boyfriend used to listen to together, she’s thrown back in time and forced to relive that experience. What seems initially like a gift, to spend more time with that person, becomes a curse that separates her more and more from the present.

“It’s a really interesting time to dip into a character’s life because, on an analytical level, it’s gratifying for an audience to be playing catch-up to the characters, rather than be two steps ahead of them,” Boynton tells Stylist.

People may assume that, after two years, a person is supposed to have started to ‘move on’ and forge ahead with their life. But Harriet is someone who finds the healing process hard. “She wants to cling to Max and can’t imagine moving forward, as it feels like a betrayal,” Boynton adds.

The Chevalier actor shared that the script appealed to her because she’s “a very nostalgic and sentimental person”. She has to remind herself to keep moving forward, but music is the one thing Boynton will allow herself to go back to again and again. “It’s lovely to have that connection to someone or some place. It can be all-consuming and take you somewhere completely far away from your own experiences.” 

One album that she’s found herself returning to recently? “Oh, Beyoncé, for sure. I don’t usually listen to albums cover-to-cover, but with Renaissance, you just have to.”

The Greatest Hits showcases that conflicting emotions can exist and be true at the same time. “I found it such an interesting and intriguing lesson in the idea that moving forward doesn’t mean letting go of everything. It doesn’t mean you’re not honouring the person you lost or your time together,” Boynton says.

Because we effectively see two different versions of Harriet – grief-stricken in the present day, and in the past with Max – Boynton approached the character as if she was two different people. “You’re trying to offer the sparks of hope that she had, and the contrast highlights how much of Harriet has been lost in the grief and how colourless she feels her life has become since losing Max.”

Harriet’s make-up and style were integral to differentiating between Harriet from the past and her present-day incarnation. “We really wanted to show Harriet as this curious, cool and adventurous person, and her experimental make-up and styling was an interesting and practical way for us to give the audience a glimpse into her, before grief,” Boynton says. 

One of the biggest characters in this film is the soundtrack. The music is not only a central feature of the plot but also immerses the viewer in Harriet’s memories and emotions. Boynton explains that while most of the songs were already written into the script, others were added in later on, depending on what director Ned Benson was listening to that day and the tone of the scene they were filming.

For The Greatest Hits, the actors were able to hear some of the songs live as they were filming.

“It was amazing to get to live in a version of the final product and hear what the audience will hear. In the same way great music makes you feel so much, it’s so much easier to access all of those feelings when you can hear the soundtrack,” the Bohemian Rhapsody actor adds.

In fact, one of the actor’s favourite memories from set is filming some of the final scenes to Jamie XX’s Loud Places (a pivotal song in the film). “It’s such a moving finale, and to get to hear that song aloud and live in the moment of that scene, as it will be seen on screen for audiences, was so impactful.”

The Greatest Hits is available to stream exclusively on Disney+ in the UK and Ireland on 12 April.

Images: Searchlight Pictures