James Wilby, Hugh Grant, Rupert Graves

The second of the three Merchant/Ivory films adapting E.M. Forster novels (between A Room with a View and Howard's End), Maurice deals with a theme few period pieces dare mention...( read more  read more... )--a young man's struggle with his homosexuality. It's not just a gay coming-of-age story, however. The hero wrestles with British class society as much as his personal and sexual identity.

The film opens on a stormy, windswept beach, as an older man awkwardly instructs young, fatherless Maurice Hall (James Wilby) in the "sacred mysteries" of sex. The same turbulent, wordless struggle with passion lasts throughout this slowly evolving, beautifully filmed story. Novelist E.M. Forster's brainy, British melodrama hinges on choice and compulsion, as the pensive hero falls for two completely different men. First comes frail, suppressed Clive (Hugh Grant), who wants nothing more than classical Platonic harmony... and a straight lifestyle. (Grant's performance is so convincing, one wonders how he ever became a heterosexual sex symbol.) After Clive's wedding, Maurice turns to hypnosis to cure his unspeakable longings. Unfortunately, his "cure" is interrupted by Clive's lustful, brooding, barely literate gamekeeper Scudder (Rupert Graves), a worker more at home gutting rabbits than discussing the classics. Maurice's love for a "social inferior" forces him to confront his illicit desire and his ingrained class snobbery. --Grant Balfour

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83% liked it

5,669 ratings

Critics

91% liked it

11 critics

R, 2 hrs. 20 min.

Directed by: James Ivory

Release Date: September 1, 1987

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DVD Release Date: February 24, 2004

Stats: 307 reviews

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Flixster Reviews (307)


  • May 22, 2007
    A pure classic. It is just as beautiful as the novel. I love when a film stays true to the book. The casting for all the characters were spot on. It not only deals with the tender subject of homosexuality in the early 1900s, but also with the upper and lower classes of English so...( read more)ciety.
  • March 31, 2007
    This is a Gay 101 movie -- Everyone should see -- The love was real, and it is a true story --
  • September 21, 2009
    Hugh Grant is my favourite actor
  • September 13, 2009
    i really want to see this movies
  • September 9, 2009
    One of the best film adaptations I've seen that truly makes justice to the original novel. Absolutely beautiful music and great casting.
  • May 12, 2009
    beautifulyy,well axted
  • April 28, 2009
    Hugh Grant gay? Like I didin't know..
  • April 10, 2009
    One of my new favourites. This is beautifully shot and perfectly cast.
  • March 16, 2009
    Two male English school chums find themselves falling in love at Cambridge. To regain his place in society, Clive gives up his forbidden love, Maurice (pronounced ?Morris?) and marries. While staying with Clive and his shallow wife, Anne, Maurice finally discovers romance in the ...( read more)arms of Alec, the gamekeeper. Written from personal pain, it?s E.M. Forster?s story of coming to terms with sexuality in the Edwardian age.
  • March 5, 2009
    One of the 1st gay themed movie I ever watched. Good acting and good story about that time period in England. Loved it.

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