On a beach in the early morning, 17-year-old STELLA narrates from a deeply introspective voice. She has just come to a life-altering realisation: when she was born, her life held three possible realities. She could have grown up and belonged in Sydney, San Francisco or Los Angeles for her whole childhood, but instead she questions whether she belongs to any of these places. On this thought, the world divides, and we track baby Stella as her mother rocks her in her arms on a balcony overlooking the Bondi coastline in the moonlight.
We meet San Francisco Stella in her natural habitat: climbing anything possible, yelling, “Mom, did you see that?” In this reality, her family is happy, her life is a playground, her primary school is Mandarin immersion and her biggest worry is whether there will be dessert tonight. What does she spend most of her time doing? Either running around the house of her best friends BELLA and SIENNA, keen to find their next mission, or on a day trip with her sister IVY and nanny LINLEY, searching for their next adventure. And if they’re lucky, the snow will dump and the family will hop in the car and head to Tahoe to ski for the weekend. Not to forget what Stella anticipates all year: the annual trip to Sydney, Australia, to visit her extended family. So like, yeah, it was a pretty chill life. And then they move to Hollywood.
Next, we meet Los Angeles Stella, laughing hysterically with her best friends. In this reality, she is so comfortable and yet more worried. Her family is a mess (her sister mentally unstable and her parents unable to cope), so she’s become the fixer of the family, trying her hardest to make sure everyone is okay. Amid this confusion, she finds her best friends, the girls she would swear to God are her unrelated sisters. This Stella doesn’t care what anyone thinks of her. She is unapologetically herself, and she is free. Even so, anxiety sets in. The yearly trips to Sydney continue but somehow start to feel more bittersweet. She begins to question whether there is a reality where she could live in Australia. This dream comes true when her parents decide it’s time to go back home to family. You guessed it: they move again, but this time it’s a big one: 12,000 kilometres from almost everything Stella has known.
And finally, we meet Sydney Stella, the girl from the beach staring longingly at the horizon. But in this reality, something is different. She feels lost in a place where it seemed inevitable she would belong. Isn’t Sydney her home? Here, her family is stable again, her extended family is full of fun and traditions, her emotions are consuming, her comfort has been taken away, and the world she lives in couldn’t be any more beautiful. This Stella has no room for bitchy girls at high school. Her trust has already been broken by her many attempts at friendship, but even so she’s not giving up on making friends. Determined, she pushes through the pain in hopes of finding her people, but instead finds something perhaps more powerful than any friendship she could have made. When she first moved to Sydney, she believed she couldn’t be her true self until she belonged, but she eventually realises that she cannot belong until she shows herself. We hop back and forth between Stella’s realities in her mind, examining what her life might have been if she had stayed in each place. This is the moment when the girl from the beach no longer longs for what she doesn’t have, but realises who she is. And that wherever she goes, there she is, and there is home.
