Starring Katie Holmes. Rated PG.

Everyone says there’s a fine line between genius and madness, and many would-be artists have touted illness as a mark of vast talent. In Touched With Fire, two poets meet in a psychiatric hospital and decide to go off—and off their meds—together, in search of greatness.

When Katie Holmes marshals her talents to get out from under the squeaky-girl voice she’s known for, she impresses as Carla, a New Yorker whose bipolar mood swings often end in panic attacks. The movie founders on the casting of Luke Kirby as Marco, a fellow graphomaniac whose doodles fill countless notebooks in his hydro-free flat—as seen in the most arresting sequence, with Griffin Dunne as Marco’s flummoxed father looking on, aghast. Marco convinces Carla that they’re both from another planet, but Kirby, a similar lead weight in Take This Waltz, is a charisma-free presence who manages to produce almost nothing of interest to watch—let alone make the ladies risk everything for him.

To be fair, Kirby has been handed something weak, if well-intentioned, by writer-director Paul Dalio, who proceeds to obscure everything with lots of handheld-camera twitching. Marco is obsessed with the titular, real-life book by Kay Redfield Jamison, who shows up in a flat, doclike sequence. He loves that she claims almost every great person in history as schizophrenic, but isn’t keen on her advocacy of chemicals. Roughly half the movie consists of Marco making increasingly manic arguments against drugs—when not sulking dully. Sadly, this Fire burns out before it can leave any lasting marks.