We first see Carla (Katie Holmes) at a bookstore reading from her newly published book of poetry. Despite this success, her mother Sara (Christine Lahti) is worried about her daughter who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder; she swings between periods of manic energized highs followed by debilitating lows. Although she is on medication, she often quits taking it. Obsessed with finding out more about the kind of person she was before this terrible disease changed her life, Carla visits a psychiatric hospital to check her records and winds up being admitted there.

When we first meet Marco (Luke Kirby) he has taken all the books and papers in his apartment and stacked them into separate piles. His father (Griffin Dunne) is stunned to hear that he has quit his job and intends to live frugally on ketchup from McDonalds and milk from Starbucks until the Apocalypse takes place. These ramblings indicate that he is off his meds and in need of help. He is placed in the same mental ward as Carla; they meet in group therapy sessions.

Both poets, they soon begin to consider themselves as soul mates. Marco calls himself "Luna" and describes himself as a rapper. Soon he and Carla are meeting up in the middle of the night to share a fantasy of connecting with the moon. But they make each other more manic and are separated by the doctors. Months later, they reconnect on the outside and move in together. They plan to bequeath to the world a miracle child. They paint images from Vincent Van Gogh's The Starry Night on the walls of their apartment. Marco exalts in the fact that a large number of great painters, novelists, poets, composers, and sculptors who were bi-polar. He is convinced that his illness is a gift and so cherishes his mania.

Paul Dalio serves as writer and director of Touched with Fire and Spike Lee serves as executive producer. The screenplay refers to Kay Redfield Jamison's 1993 book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament where she explores the interplay between madness and creativity. Are depressed individuals drawn to creative expression? Does the imagination cause mood disorders? And can mood disorders bring about increased levels of creativity in already gifted people? Jamison proves by her own example that those who diligently take their meds can triumph over this disease. She appears in the film advising Marco and Carla to do just that.

Mental illness in artists is a rich and adventuresome subject, and Paul Dalio has used his experiences with manic-depressive illness to pump up the drama's treatment of the disease. It also helps that Luke Kirby and Katie Holmes elicit our empathy and sympathy as loving soulmates.

Do not miss the extensive list of artists in the closing credits who are reported to have suffered from bipolar disorder including Lord Byron, Emily Dickinson, Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Woolf, Pyotr Tchaikovsky, and many more.