Despite the title, the action of this film takes place entirely in France and none of the characters are English. In the Paris of 1935, the teenage Sylvie is left an orphan when her father, discovering his wife in flagrante delicto with her lover, shoots them both dead before blowing his own brains out. Because hers is a wealthy family, these deaths leave Sylvie not only an orphan but also an heiress, but she is packed off to a strict "English-style" boarding school by her corrupt guardian, who hopes to use the income from her inheritance to fund his own debauched lifestyle.
The title refers to the apparent French belief that all English boarding schools are run according to an educational philosophy which gives a greater emphasis to strict discipline than to academic achievement, although this supposed "discipline" is more often than not merely a cover for sadism and sexual perversion, on the part of both staff and pupils. (I was not educated at boarding school myself, but I doubt if those of my acquaintance who were would recognise this description of their schooldays). Once at school, the initially shy and innocent young Sylvie is quickly introduced to the pleasures of lesbian love by her friend Claire. This relationship is a loving and gentle one, but when Claire leaves the school Sylvie graduates to the harder and more dubious pleasures of sado-masochism. A sub-plot deals with the headmistress's love-affair with one of her supposedly female colleagues, who is really a man in drag. (This must count as one of the least successful attempts at female impersonation in screen history. Robin Williams made a better woman in "Mrs Doubtfire").
I am grateful to the previous reviewer who drew my attention to the existence of the "schoolgirl spanking" genre of film-making. I had not come across this genre until I stumbled across "Education Anglaise" on television recently, although I suppose I should not be surprised by its existence. Spanking certainly seems to be this film's raison d'etre; my summary of the plot above was written only to meet IMDb's "minimum length" requirement. I doubt if the film's target audience will take much interest in the plot; even the film-makers treated it very perfunctorily as little more than a framework for the spanking scenes. Those who like seeing schoolgirls being spanked will enjoy this film. Or, perhaps I should say, those who like seeing not-particularly-attractive twenty-something actresses being spanked while pretending (not very successfully) to be teenage schoolgirls will enjoy this film. Those who don't (and I fall into that category) most certainly won't. If this is the "Citizen Kane" of schoolgirl chastisement, I dread to think what the lesser entries in the catalogue must be like. 1/10
