Glasgow Film Festival 2022 hosts the European Premiere of the remarkable true story of ‘Brandon Lee’. Not Bruce Lee’s son Brandon Lee, but a Scottish man who returned to school, taking a false name, and fooled his classmates and teachers into thinking he was still a boy. Indeed Brandon manages to impress them with his intellect and general knowledge well in advance of his peers (and some of his teachers).

Jono McLeod’s film is part animated, part interview style documentary starring ‘Brandon’s’ old schoolmates and teachers, and with Alan Cumming as Brandon. It’s a total gem, as they say in Scotland.

It’s set in Bearsden, mainly at Bearsden Academy. This is no sink school. Brandon’s mother worked hard to get into ‘spam valley’ Bearsden (that’s the rough part) to give her son a better shot at life. Bearsden is more typically the home of a moneyed class of people like doctors and lawyers.

Through Brandon, and the experiences he has, and the impact he has on others, we are taken back to school life in the early 1990s with the bullying, the bravado, feeling alone, trying to be popular, and – in a place like Bearsden – trying to do well in class.

This is a sometimes laugh-out-loud, sometimes moving film, and an engaging portrait of an oddball man’s journey through 5th year in a Glasgow school. The way he touched and shaped the life of his best friend is particularly heartening, and Cumming is perfect in the role.

My Old School deserves full stars and some more.

Ailie Hunter
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