With calm honesty and intelligence, Ella Glendining sets out in her revealing documentary what it is like as a woman in her 20s dealing with a condition which is sometimes called proximal femoral focal deficiency or PFFD (although this is not a term used in the film). Glendining was born without hip joints and with short femurs; she can walk or use a wheelchair, and is really almost without problems other than people’s discriminatory attitudes.
These include those who are excruciatingly well-meaning: Glendining and a friend with autism recount a revealing anecdote about Glendining using her wheelchair in the street, and someone quite far away on the pavement starting to cringe away from her, apparently making space but in a weirdly self-aggrandising way, radiating coded pass-agg hostility while saying: “Sorry … sorry … sorry … thank you … sorry …”
