Jerome, a clever, and taut indie featuring wonderful perfomances has at it's core a basic corollary: The ideal of 'freedom' can vary greatly within each of us and therefore the price paid for that freedom. The film paints the portrait of a burnt-out welder who one day decides to change his life, literally walk away from family and friends in pursuit of a festering dream. It's a symbolic jouney that can't help but be frought with peril and take him unexpected directions. Jerome is not the name of the said protagonist, but rather a small artists alcove in the middle of the Arizona desert the film's anti-hero, Wade Hampton, has uprooted his life for. It's a place he knows only through a postcard and once the free-spirited, drifter Jane shows up, Wade's seemingly straight-forward itinerary begins to buckle. Jerome is refreshingly introspective, given its familiar subject matter. Wade's pursuit is marked by such innocense and singleness of purpose, his conviction in his dream so total, that he succeeds in blocking out the inherent emptiness of such a quest. Beautifully photographed, Jerome is a thoughtful, stylistic and understated piece of filmmaking, a road trip into the core of everyday human dissatisfaction where the route is seldom straight and the destination is never the final stop. It is the road less traveled and assuredly a road worth taking.
