Maurice

E. M. Forster ordered that his novel “Maurice” was not to be published until well after his death. Maurice (James Wilby) is a young law student destined for the privileges and security of his class. While at University Maurice begins a passionate love affair with the classics loving Clive (Hugh Grant). In the strict Platonic codes of the University, homosexuality is tolerated but once Clive and Maurice graduate the demands of bourgeois life mean that they must finish their love affair. While Clive recants his earlier love, Maurice finds it increasingly difficult to hide his homosexuality. Meeting the working-class stable boy Scudder (Rupert Graves), he finally rejects the Victorian morality of the bourgeoisie and makes a decision for individual freedom. Lush, elegant and masterfully directed by James Ivory, “Maurice” is an intricate study of not only the emergence of homosexual consciousness but also of the confining strictures of the English class structure.