AllMovie

In this arthouse film, Heading for England seems to be the continental version of the complex English idiomatic expression "gone west," one meaning of which is someone who has gone away, never to return. Hans (Geert Lageveen) is a high-school student whose factory worker father wants him to become a university student. At the beginning of the film, he watches the brutal treatment of a transvestite barber by his fellow students, which results in injury of several students by the aggrieved cross-dresser, and his committing suicide by walking into the ocean. Later, the boy and his father are involved in an unresolved conflict over whether he will go to the university.