From Merchant/Ivory Productions, the team that made A Room With A View, comes another film based on a novel by E.M. Forster, who wrote it in 1914, but suppressed it during his lifetime.  It wasn't published until 1971, one year after his death.

Maurice (James Wilby) a pre-WWI undergraduate at Cambridge of upper-class breeding finds his equal in Clive (Hugh Grant) a fellow student. Although they share a deep love, Clive believes it should be pure and never consummated.  Maurice can't bear the spiritual without the physical and realizes his true sexuality when Clive announces his marriage, there-by denouncing his willingness to take that final step.

A few years go by until Maurice finds physical love with Scudder (Rupert Graves) a farmhand on an estate he is visiting.  After some mistrust and suspicion on both their parts, they find love together.

There are "tasteful" love scenes, that go further than any American production would dare.  They are realistic, graphic without being exploitative, romantic and convincing.  I thought this film would repulse me, but instead it tells a most romantic story.  And because the lovers are men, it's extremely special.  And it shows that the themes of love and what lovers go through are timeless and universal, be they hetero-or homosexual.