A gay art cinema trailblazer about love and loss, Merchant Ivory’s adaptation of E.M. Forster’s posthumously published novel serves as a poignant attack on the stifling conformity and repression of English society on the eve of WWI. Maurice (James Wilby) is forced to struggle alone to come to terms with his sexual identity after his first love, Clive (Hugh Grant), abandons him for a respectable marriage, denying his true desires. Then an encounter with Scudder (Rupert Graves), Clive’s groundskeeper, opens up new possibilities for the heartbroken Maurice.