TECH NOIR

Lisa Joy, co-creator of TV’s Westworld, is, um, reminiscing about the origins of the idea for Reminiscence, her debut feature as a writer/director. Given that the film’s a high-concept sci-fi noir thriller, it’s surprising to learn that it has its roots in Joy’s grandfather’s modest house in Huddersfield (Joy is “half-British”). The house was named Suki Lynn. When her grandfather passed away, Joy helped sort through his paperwork and discovered a faded photograph of a beautiful young woman called... you guessed it.

“I realised that it must have been someone that he met in his own youth,” she tells Total Film, “and something about the nature of their connection was special enough to him that 50 years later, across the world, he still had this house named after her. It started making me think about memory at this crossroads moment of my life, and the moments that mean so much to us in our life. It’s never the thing that you think it will be. It’s always these quiet moments and interactions with people that you love.”

Joy felt the same pangs in the unexpected moments she shared with her daughter when she was a baby: sleep-deprived cuddles, the touch of a hand, a stroke of her hair. “It was like I was nostalgic for a moment before it had even passed,” she continues. “It made me start thinking about memory, and how all of us have this is: well, what if we could?”