The germ of a halfway interesting story is lost in a cornucopia of cliches and coincidences in “Bound,” an indie drama about fleeing abuse only to wind up in the supportive arms of a slew of open-hearted New Yorkers.

Sure. You can laugh at that. I did.

Writer-director Isaac Hirotsu Woofter’s debut feature is off the festival circuit and facing the real world, where indulgent, confused “fever dream” storytelling, stereotypical characters and a grungy fantasy version of being homeless in New York isn’t as easily forgiven.

It’s kind of a mess, kids.

Alexandra Fate Sadeghian plays Bella, a haunted, traumatized 20something whose dreams of New York art school have been denied her by her drug-using, drug-dealing stepdad, Gordy (Bryant Carroll).

Her abused, drunk-addicted mother (Pooya Mohsen) is too stoned or passive to escape. Finding her hidden acceptance letter to the New York City Art Academy is a final straw for Bella, who packs up her eyeliner and pet chipmunk, shoots her way to freedom and escapes to New York.

She has some crystal meth, which helps her find a “tribe,” if only for as long as that lasts. Impulsive, desperate Bella finds herself broke, homeless, with nothing but her wits to sneak her into places to squat, a job and sustenance.

That “acceptance letter” is pretty much forgotten, BTW. Any metal sculpting she does will be for pleasure or necessity.

Luckily for Bella, traumatized vet Owais (Ramin Karimloo) takes her on as a barrista at his coffee shop. Barmaid/bar manager Marta (Jessica Pimentel) lets her stay, even adopting her squirrel Bandit as a “mascot.”

And clothing clerk and aspiring designer Standrick (Jaye Alexander) is here to look the other way as she shoplifts, and give her the cliched gay BFF advice that the movies have trotted out since the Edward Everett Horton ’30s.

“You need to food. You need sleep. You NEED a new perspective. And you need to stop acting like a b-itch!”

The “plot,” such as it is, reguires chasm-spanning coincidences in order to bring worlds and characters into conflict with one another. Whatever rural Meth Belt America hamlet Bella flees, it’s got to be close enough to New York for Gordy to make regular treks there.

That bar Marta runs? Gordy’s an owner, or at least the face of ownership for shadowy Bigger Fish in the Drug Trade. What’re the odds, right?

The nuts and bolts of surviving homelessness in New York are skimmed over without much regard for reality. And Bella’s back story is more interesting than her present circumstances, despite the dire straits she finds herself in when she resolves to “rescue” her mother from the slob she shot to escape.

The one joke here might be dressing the sexually abusive Gordy in a cap that reads “I (Heart) STDs.”

The dialogue, save for the alternately fiesty and florid declarations of Standrick, is bland. The early scenes work better as we’re forced to piece together the story without much in the way of any dialogue at all.

The players aren’t bad, but this script is thinly developed and kind of slapped together in the editing, which doesn’t help the “coherence” thing.

That’s why “Bound” needs those coincidences and splashes of melodrama. Not that they help all that much.

Rating: unrated, violence, substance abuse, profanity

Cast: Alexandra Faye Sadeghian, Ramin Karimloo, Jessica Pimentel, Pooya Mohsen, Jaye Alexander and Bryant Carroll.

Credits: Scripted and directed by
Isaac Hirotsu Woofter. A Freestyle release.

Running time: 1:41