A “YA” best-seller drowns in the lazy screenwriter’s worst enemy, endless “VO” of the lead character, constantly telling us her innermost thoughts, in “The Tearsmith,” a tale of orphans who reach puberty bonded by more than just shared trauma.

The constant eye contact and personal space violations just tease out what we know is coming. His protests to “Keep her away from me” (in Italian, or dubbed into English) can’t hide his hunger.And her professed loathing doesn’t disguise her longing.

It’s a pity they’ve been adopted out as brother and sister.

Some clever young adult novelist taking the nom de plume Erin Doom wrote this turgid melodrama, which has been translated into 26 languages so far. But director and co-writer Alessandro Genovesi (“My Big Gay Italian Wedding,” “When Mom is Away”) treats the novelist’s every word like Old Testament Truths. The film is voice-over narrated to death.

“I wanted to wash away his sadness.” “So many times I was unable to feel the raw detachment that I wish I could.”

Voice-over narration takes the film out of the hands of the actors, who could SHOW us literally every emotion, reaction and consideration the author presents as interior monologue on the written page. It’s the crutch Genovesi and co-screenwriter Eleanora Fiorini use to beat this slight but forbidden fruit-edgy teen romance to death.

We meet tween Nica on the day her parents are killed in a crash on a road trip. Her mother had just told her “The wolf is just the villain (in fairy tales) because somebody said so.”

The words will haunt her, and turn up in that voice-over once or twice, as Nica — named for a butterfly — is sent to a Gothic orphanage where cruel Miss Margaret reigns.

It takes years for this damaged child (played by Caterina Ferioli) to be adopted out, time enough for her to make friends among her fellow orphans, and make one enemy for life.

Rigel (Simone Baldassari) is a piano prodigy, a brooding, pale, mop-topped hunk with voluptuous lips and faraway eyes. All Nica can think of when he’s around is her mother’s necklace, which he snatched off her neck on Miss Margaret’s orders the day she arrived.

Then a family takes her in, and just as they’re leaving on the day they pick her up, they stop — transfixed by the soulful piano stylings of the boy named for a star.

Next thing she knows, Nica’s escape from this institution whose inmates nicknamed it “Grave” is ruined because she’s to finish her teens in the company of her tormentor.

“Moth,” Rigel calls the butterfly-named Nica.

Rigel has a scary intensity, and that shows itself in violence at school, where he busts up a school bully and tries to intimidate the boys who are drawn to Nica like you-know-whats to a flame.

As she makes friends and gets the attention of even more boys, Nica starts to ponder just why she hates Rigel, how that started, and if it was ever fair. And he’s easy on the eyes. As their “parents” are formalizing the adoption process, her love/lust timing could not be worse.

“The Tearsmith,” taking its title from a nightmarish fairytale figure whom Nica accuses Rigel of being, with Rigel returning the accusation, draws out this long mating ritual, giving us clues about just what went on in that orphange and how everybody who spent too much time there is “broken” — most too broken to cry.

Like a lot of Italian teen romances and sex-comedies made for Netflix, “Tearsmith” is a little titillating, but never terribly interesting. The characters are bland archetypes, right down to their haircuts.

One curious thing about it is how the story’s timeframe is handled. The fashions and the 1970s Jeep Wagoneer that Nica’s parents are driving when they crash suggests she’s a tween 50 or so years ago. The later teen scenes show us 1980s cars, and older ’70s models, in the background. That works.

And then somebody pulls out a cell phone. For all the YAs out there unaware of this, there were no “smart phones” in the ’80s or even the ’90s.

It’s not enough to make you write off the entire enterprise. But it does add to the unreality of it all, with all that voice-over, all that torpid dialogue — “I beg of you.” “This path is nothing but thorns!” The chest heaving performances are sort of “Twilight Lite.”

The lack of surprises, the contrived nature of the conflicts that turn into love connections and the cumbersome voiced-over-to-death technique and the abandonment of the whole “tearsmith” metaphor render this potential teen tearjerker nothing to cry over.

Rating: TV-MA, violence, sex, nudity, profanity

Cast: Caterina Ferioli, Simone Baldassari, Alessandro Bedetti and Nicky Passsarella

Credits: Directed by Alessandro Genovesi, scripted by Eleanora Fiorini and Alessandro Genovesi, based on the novel by Erin Doom. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:46