There is no greater responsibility in this world than saving lives. You could be a doctor, a marriage counsellor, a priest…Or, like the heroine of this little-known but highly relevant film, a radio-show host. Your job is to stop people from taking the wrong turn in life. Meet Dominique ‘The Dame’. A Stanford graduate, her radio show Real Talk rules the waves. She is the undisputed queen of all that she surveys from the snazzy booth of her radio stations where every night, she is questioned on her socio-political ideology and allegiance to the black community.
The film, with its sharply-cutting repartees thrown at the sexy RJ by people she scarcely knows, is a treat to hear and watch. When it opens we see Dominique has serious problems with her love life as she heads for the studio. Being a talkathon, the narrative ensures it doesn’t end up being a radio on cinema. The visuals are imperative to the drama that develops from the Snapchat that Dominique has with strangers, semi-strangers and people whom, we understand, she has built a rapport with over the ….Months? Years?
How long has Dominique’s show is on air? We are not spoonfed any back history to satiate our curiosity on the genesis of the talk show. All we have is the now. The immediate presence navigates through her tough childhood and teens, she was part of an all-Black version of Shakespeare’s play. In Real Talk, Ms Charmichael is still addressing issues pertinent to the Black community. And that’s fine. At least she is not pretending to be colour blind, as has become fashionable in American cinema.
Written and directed by Preston A Whitemore 2, Real Talk gets 2 and a half stars.
Image Source: IMDb, youtube/earthmediadistribution
Image Source: IMDb, youtube/earthmediadistribution