A bi-polar love story attempts to surface in Paul Dalio's TOUCHED WITH FIRE

How do you legitimately dramatize the plight of bi-polar/emotionally-challenged individuals without, on the one hand, giving into sentimentality and the urge to placate the feel-good crowd, or on the other making the movie so damned real and therefore often unpleasant that it can't possibly pass for entertainment? Writer/director Paul Dalio (shown below), who, according to the press notes on this relatively new movie -- it was made back in 2014 under the title of Mania Days but is just now being released theatrically as TOUCHED WITH FIRE -- has himself struggled with bi-polar disorder and here creates a kind of love story between two approaching-middle-age people who both suffer from this disorder.

Dalio has indeed managed to probe, with the help of his two lead actors -- Katie Holmes and Luke Kirby -- a couple of interesting and for the most part believable characters: two would-be artists with some but not (from what we see here, at least) major talent in their respective fields of fine art and creative writing who bond during their simultaneous stay in a progressive and relatively easy-going mental institution. Mr. Kirby and Ms Holmes, shown below, connect with each other believably, while expressing their hugely up-and-down mood swings with the proper passion and deadness, anger and joy.

Unfortunately, however, there must be a story to connect all this, and the one that Dalio has come up with is noticeably lacking in believability now and again. From the outset he stacks the deck too heavily against his protagonists by saddling them both with parents who repeatedly accentuate the negative so far their child is concerned. (Granted, the children do this very well all by themselves.)

As played, and well, by Griffin Dunne (Kirby's character's dad) and Christine Lahti (Holmes' character's mom), these two repeatedly rail against the actions of their kids instead of trying to encourage, as well as modulate and/or circumscribe, those actions.

As usual, in scenarios such as this, the question of taking one's medicines -- which might and probably do curtail creativity and energy to some extent -- becomes paramount to the bi-polar, with results that are not helpful to anyone. To this end, the filmmaker inserts one scene featuring Kay Redfield Jamison, the woman who wrote the book, Touched With Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament that evidently helped inspire this movie. In that scene, Ms Jamison reassures the pair that taking lithium has not diminished her creativity. However, the scene clunks badly and seems out of left field. In any case, the Kirby character does not appear to be convinced by Ms. Jamison's words.

During the pair's "up" times, the movie can get a bit too cutesy (placing a sleeping potion into the coffee cup of the hospital guard on duty) and, much worse, far too unbelievable (as in the duo's later escape from the authorities, which looks downright ludicrous).

Finally the movie asks us what it might take for the world to allow two enormously problemed people to roam free, live, marry, conceive and wreak havoc upon themselves and probably others. Unless, of course, they take their medicines. As the end credits roll, the movie offers up a list of supposedly bi-polar artists throughout history. Most of these people are now dead, and so their bi-polarity cannot so easily be proven. But the list may work for some viewers as a kind of apology for the behavior that accompanies the art.

As you might have already gathered, all of the above proves a tricky balancing act, which unfortunately, the filmmaker fails to manage. At one point toward the finale, Kirby's character asks, "Are we a mistake?" This is a haunting and very sad question to have to ask about oneself. I would not want to hazard an opinion regarding these two people. But I have to say that, in some important respects, the movie about them certainly is.

From Roadside Attractions and running a bit too long at 110 minutes, Touched With Fire opens this coming Friday, February 19, here in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale area at the Aventura Mall 24 and the AMC Sunset Place 24, after making its theatrical debut this past weekend in New York and Los Angeles.

"Down" with love: GIRLFRIEND, from Justin Lerner, opens at New York's Quad Cinema

At the beginning of Justin Lerner's new film, GIRLFRIEND, a hard-working mother nearing senior status and her Down Syndrome-afflicted son look up at the stars one night after a long, difficult day. "What would you wish for?" asks mom. "A love affair," he answers. Ooooh, trouble. Because mom is played by that great actress Amanda Plummer, this gives the first few scenes of Lerner's movie enormous weight and veracity. The time is now and the place a rural northeastern community as down on its economic luck as most of of the rest of the U.S., and we enter these sad, deprived lives understanding well what they are currently enduring.

Back in 2007 Mr. Lerner, shown at left, gave us a very well-received, award-winning short film (his fourth), The Replacement Child. Girlfriend is his first full-length feature, and with it he takes us into the mental and physical world of a handicapped young man named Evan (played by an actor with Down Syndrome named Evan Sneider, below), showing us how this character perceives the world, including everything from simple conversation to handling the workplace, friendships and then -- ah, yes -- a love relationship.

If only Mr. Lerner's movie had stuck a little closer to the details of Evan's life, particularly his relationship with his mom. Unfortunately Ms Plummer's character lasts only through the first very few scenes, and when she goes, the movie -- and we -- miss her terribly.

From there on, we're into Evan's relationship with his high school "crush," a very attractive young woman named Candy (played as well as the script permits, by Shannon Woodward, above) and her no-account boyfriend, Russ (essayed with quicksilver mood changes by Jackson Rathbone, below).

These two have a lot of baggage and back story, and all of it is aired to distraction in the course of this 94-minute movie. Not that their story is uninteresting, exactly, but it does get heavily melodramatic and certainly takes away from what we'd like to find out about Evan himself. Oh, he's quite involved with Candy and Russ -- but at the expense of his own story -- whatever else, besides the crush he has on Candy, that there might be of it. And so the movie moves from character study to melodramatic soap opera to would-be thriller and mystery to finally a feel-good forgiveness tale -- with a little something extra for Evan.

The idea that a Down Syndrome young man might feel sexual and romantic urges is in no way out-of-line. In fact, last year we had a very good example of this in the much better Spanish movie, Me too (Yo, también), which detailed the relationship of a Down Syndome fellow with a woman who works with him. That film did not shy away from the romantic or sexual aspect of the relationship, and consequently brought us viewers up short in a way that was salutary and bracing.

Girlfriend appears not to shy away from this either, but then completely caves in when it should be strongest. In what is so far the least successful movie I have seen all year -- The Abduction of Zack Butterfield, a probable camp classic -- the camera chastely turns away away during the "sex" scene, though we get Swan Lake on the sound track. Here, the camera does the same (thankfully without that particular music) when it might be nice, not to mention germane, to see the faces of our "lovers" at this particular and very fraught time. But, no, Mr Lerner cops out. That's his choice, so let's allow him that. But did he have to do it in the most tried and tired manner possible?

The movie, from Elephant Eye Films and Wayne/Lauren Film Company, opens this Friday, July 15, in New York at the Quad Cinema. It will be playing some festivals and other venues in the near future, so click here (then scroll down) to see the current list of playdates.