The king of the party: take the identity of the other to finally be yourself

for the filmmaker Solomon Ashkenazi, a struggle of opposites is waged within our existence. The ideal personality that we seek to have hides there, where an animal part and a spiritual part come together. With his new movie, The king of the party proposes the story of Héctor, a man plunged into an existential crisis, who takes the opportunity to present himself as Rafael, his extravagant and playful twin brother, after he disappears after an accident. From an alien identity that allows him to explore, he will embark on a path where a dislocated reality and the performance of a duality that battles with itself will give him that synthesis in which he finds himself, from the other.

The film has been presented at various festivals: it won the Cabrito de Plata Award for Best Mexican Fiction Feature at the 17th Monterrey International Film Festival and the Pre-Columbian Bronze Circle award at the 38th Bogotá Film Festival. It was also part of the Mexican premieres at the 19th Morelia International Film Festival.

In an interview, the director tells us about his influences, what elements were necessary for the visual style of the film, he tells us about his work on the script and the satisfaction of desire as the engine of his stories.

You have commented that the story was built taking elements from your life: you were having your second child at the time of writing it and Rafael inspired his image in an uncle of yours. How do you think personal experiences impact a filmmaker’s work?

I feel that, without planning it, it has happened to me that I am inspired by themes of well-known people. twice you [su película anterior], for example, was based on my wife and her cousin, on the very personal relationship between the two. It’s like a fuse that lights the idea and from there I say “this is interesting” and I follow. The theme of the twin, for example, does not come from anywhere in particular, I took ideas from movies like enemy either Dead Ringers.

In the end, everyone has something to say. We have to find what is unique in our life, in mind and experience, to take something authentic and not copy. At the same time, it is a mixture of your environment and the moment you are going through in your life. I started with the issue of my second son, there came a point where I felt in a family life and that I couldn’t continue making movies. Three years later he was another person, he no longer had that dilemma. Instead, he was into philosophy or spirituality. You have to listen to what is moving internally to capture it.

In my reading, we find in your movies characters they want. Do you consider that desire is the main motivation of your stories?

Yes, I think that this film talks a lot about desire, it is a subject that I am very clear about. I don’t know if it is like that for the viewer, but there is an idea that seems attractive to me and that is that Héctor has so much desire to change, to live in another way, that he caused everything that happened in the film, his mind and his desire ended. materializing the situation. I think you create your reality in a certain way and desire is a key to open many things.

Your film is an atypical catharsis: you use an already seen approach, of two opposite characters, but you make Héctor seek liberation from the other, since he becomes someone else. It seems like a celebration of pretending. What do you consider to be the function of the simulacrum when searching for meaning or asserting itself?

I think it’s the way to become your ideal self, acting like him, even if it’s a bit forced at first and that’s going to make you that person. If I imagine another me, I’m going to start acting like him and that’s going to make me become it. Héctor is very stuck and the way to change him is to live the ideal version of what he would like to be; he is presented with the opportunity to do it freely, without consequences, because at the end of the day, as he is playing, nobody knows that it is not him.

There is also the idea of ​​the double. What strikes you most about the double?

I feel that it means this struggle that we all have between an animal soul and a spiritual one. Héctor and Rafael are extreme and Héctor must reach a balance. It’s not like Rafael is perfect, they both have things that are right and wrong. It’s like moving the switch, stop being who you think you are and open your consciousness, with the opportunity to feel that you are not being judged. As they believe that he is not Hector, he feels that he can say whatever he wants, he opens a mental lock that frees him.

There is a certain tone of fantasy in your film. You worked on the script with Karen Chacek, a writer who has ventured into this genre. Could you tell me something about her participation?

Karen got to land the movie. For two years I had a version where she had no twin, it was just like a double. The movie had its own thing, but it was confusing, it needed a lot of explanation. I started production with another script, but I realized that I wasn’t clear on it and we decided to cancel it on the second day. After a year it was filmed again. I spoke to Karen because she needed an outside voice to help me, she has more structure than me and I trusted her to give me an older perspective; she helped me balance strangeness and fantasy with something more digestible, without losing them.

Visually you have said that you were looking for an abstract expression in the emotional. There are games of mirrors, reflections in the water, symmetries that are broken. What elements were essential, necessary or functional to execute that abstraction in the concrete?

A lot of planning was necessary. I usually leave a lot of undefined space for editing and production, but here there was more scouting and preparation with Nur Rubio, the photographer; we made a shooting Very detailed.

Another thing is that we had a clear proposal. If we wanted to express duality we needed mirrors, reflections. For confusion, head shots or downward reflections in the water; abandoned houses too… it worked for us to find locations that had everything. The house, for example, is one more character, it was the childhood home of Daniel Adissi, a musician and actor in the film, there was a strong emotional charge that connected with elements of the script. Everything came together, knowing what we wanted, good framing and good locations.

The sound has a very important accent in your films, how do you consider that it has an impact on achieving a setting, on proposing a mood for the movie and the characters?

From the script I’m thinking about what song and what sound will be. The best-known songs, like Father John Misty’s, were written down from there. I am very open to people collaborating and proposing, so I have this musical team with Daniel [Adissi], who is a musician, and Jacobo Betech, music supervisor. The three of us look for songs to put together the soundtrack. I’ve been told that I’m very into videoclipping, but I really like doing those montages, experimenting with editing and playing with effects and sounds in the mix. There is a very careful post production work in that section.

To close, how would you like your film to be characterized?

I would like people to find it fun, intense and unique. And also that it is something that makes you think, I think it has several details that can be interpreted in different ways.

the king of the party premiered on January 20 in national theaters.