The supporting cast includes Denholm Elliott as Dr Barry, Simon Callow as Mr Ducie, Billie Whitelaw as Mrs Hall, and Ben Kingsley as Lasker-Jones.

The story follows its main character, Maurice Hall, through university, a tumultuous relationship, struggling to fit into society, and ultimately being united with his life partner.

During a trip to a beach, Maurice Hall, an 11-year-old schoolboy, receives instructions about the "sacred mystery" of sex from his teacher, who wants to explain to the fatherless boy the changes he would experience in puberty.

Years later in 1909, Maurice is attending the University of Cambridge, where he strikes up a friendship with two fellow students: the aristocratic Viscount Risley and the rich and handsome Clive Durham.

The two friends keep their feelings secret but are frightened when Risley is arrested and sentenced to six months' hard labour after soliciting sex from a soldier.

After his return from a trip to Greece, Clive, under pressure from his widowed mother, marries a naive rich girl named Anne and settles into a life of domesticity at his estate of Pendersleigh.

They spend the night together in a hotel room, and as Alec leaves the next morning he explains that his departure for Argentina is imminent and they will not see each other again.

Alec has left his family and abandoned his plans to emigrate to stay with Maurice, telling him, "Now we shan't never be parted."

James Ivory was interested in making a screen adaptation after the critical and box office success he achieved with another of Forster's novels, A Room with a View.

[11] Julian Sands, who had played the male lead in Merchant Ivory's A Room with a View, was originally cast in the title role,[11] but backed out at the last minute.

When Sands left the project, Ivory considered two unknown actors for the role of Maurice: Wilby and Julian Wadham.

He was doing review comedy at the time and had lost interest in professional acting when Celestia Fox, the casting director, sent Grant to Ivory who immediately gave him the role of Clive.

The supporting cast included veterans Denholm Elliott as Dr. Barry and Simon Callow as the pedagogue Mr. Ducie, both from A Room with a View; Kingsley as Lasker-Jones; Patrick Godfrey as the butler Simcox; Billie Whitelaw as Maurice's mother; and Helena Bonham Carter in an uncredited cameo as an audience member at the cricket match.

The film expands the Wildean character of Lord Risley and sees him sentenced to six months of hard labour for homosexual conduct; in the novel, he is never imprisoned.

In the novel, the Durham family seat is Penge, on the border of Wiltshire and Somerset; in the film, the country house is in Pendersleigh Park.

[18] In The New York Times Janet Maslin observed "The novel's focus is predominantly on the inner life of the title character, but the film, while faithful, is broader.

Moving slowly, with a fine eye for detail, it presents the forces that shape Maurice as skillfully as it brings the character to life.

Although some people might find Wilby unfocused in the title role, I thought he was making the right choices, portraying a man whose real thoughts were almost always elsewhere.Claire Tomalin writing for Sight & Sound called the film "subtle, intelligent, moving and absorbing [...] extraordinary in the way it mixes fear and pleasure, horror and love, it's a stunning success for a team who seems to have mastered all the problems of making literary films".

[5] Judy Stone in the San Francisco Chronicle wrote: "To director James Ivory's credit, however, he has recreated that period in pre-World War I England and endowed the platonic passion between two upper-class Englishmen with singular grace in Maurice.

"[21] Michael Blowen in The Boston Globe commented: "The team of producer Ismail Merchant and director James Ivory has created another classy film of a classic novel with their stunning adaptation of E. M. Forster's Maurice.

[22]Maurice has won abundant praise in the 30 years since its initial release, both for the quality of the film and the audacity with which it depicted a gay love story at the height of the 1980s AIDS crisis.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the fact that: "the lush, dignified 'Maurice,' with its share of man-on-man smooches, full-frontal male nudity, gay lovemaking and unabashed declarations of same-sex desire, as well as a main character who was ultimately affirmative and unwavering about his homosexuality (during a time when it was a criminal offense, no less), landed a unique place in then-contemporary gay culture.

That a movie which celebrated romance between men – with a rare happy ending – was released at the height of the AIDS epidemic only added to the acclaimed picture’s provocative profile.

'"[24] The Guardian, describing Maurice as "undervalued in 1987 and underseen in 2017", lamented the relatively poor reception of the film compared to its lauded predecessor A Room with a View, saying it was "...filed away as, if not a disappointment, a lesser diversion" because it was "put bluntly, too gay".

[25] LA Weekly likewise called Maurice "the Merchant-Ivory film the World Missed", stating that: "it seems like it’s only recently been celebrated for how groundbreaking it was, and for its importance in the development of gay cinema.