'Touched With Fire': EW review

Van Gogh, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Byron, Plath: Mania was the match that helped ignite their creative gifts, according to psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison’s 1996 case study Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. Filmmaker Paul Dalio—who is himself bipolar—explores those same ties, adding beat poetry and romance to the mix in his earnest, uneven debut. Luke Kirby and Katie Holmes star as aspiring writers who meet in a New York psychiatric ward and fall in love—both with each other and with the idea of shedding the dulling effects of their mood-regulating medications together. The two actors commit fully to their characters’ highs and lows, though the story suffers for never quite rooting them in any reality beyond their illness; who are Carla and Marco when they’re not twirling through fountains and staring at the sun? Touched With Fire has something to say about a thorny, serious subject, but the light it shines doesn’t really illuminate anything new. B