Identity Crisis (film)

Infobox Film
name = Identity Crisis


caption = DVD cover.
director = Melvin Van Peebles
producer = James E. Hinton
Melvin Van Peebles
eproducer =
aproducer =
writer = Mario Van Peebles
starring = Mario Van Peebles
music = E. Pearson
cinematography =
editing = Victor Kanefsky
Melvin Van Peebles
distributor = flagicon|France Euripide Distribution
released = flagicon|USA September 15, 1989
flagicon|France August 1, 2001
runtime = 100 min.
country = USA
awards =
language = English
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
amg_id = 1:24277
imdb_id = 0099825

"Identity Crisis" is a 1989 comedy film directed and edited by Melvin Van Peebles, and written by Mario Van Peebles. The film, a parody of the body switching comedy films of the era, is about a rapper (Mario Van Peebles) who winds up sharing his body with the soul of a dead fashion designer, switching between personalities every time he is struck on the head. The film was released on DVD on January 24, 2006.

Plot

Melvin Van Peebles acts as the film's narrator, introducing the film's main characters. Yves Malmaison (Richard Fancy) is a world-famous French fashion designer, a flaming homosexual with a preference for red hair, he once experimented with an American woman, and thus he has a son, Sebastian (Ilan Mitchell-Smith). Chilly D (Mario Van Peebles) is a struggling rapper who has been stealing dresses made by Malmaison to redesign and give to his many girlfriends.

On the night of a big fashion show, Malmaison is poisoned, and Chilly D is chased by the same people who poisoned the fashion designer. Through a turn of events, the souls of both men wind up in Chilly D's body. Several days later, following Malmaison's funeral, he wakes up in a hospital to discover, to his shock, that he is no longer in his own body.

Stumbling the streets, confused, Yves as Chilly tries to piece together elements of his former life, with no such luck. Making things even more difficult is the fact that every time they are struck or hit, they switch between their two personalities, leading to confusion and disorientation for people they bump into.

Yves manages to convince his son Sebastian that it is him, and they try to find out who killed him, finding that drug smugglers are trying to take over the company. At the end of the film, Chilly D manages to have all of Malmaison's memories, but still be himself, and so he and Sebastian go into business together.

External links

*imdb title|id=0099825|title=Identity Crisis