Twits Atwitter MAURICE

By RICHARD SCHICKEL

What would English literature -- or for that matter, English sexuality -- have done without gamy gamekeepers, lurking unrepressed in the gorse, ready to help the privileged class assert its true randy nature? What the ineffable Mellors did for Lady Chatterley, Alec Scudder (Rupert Graves) does for Maurice Hall (James Wilby) in this adaptation of E.M. Forster's fantasy about physically fulfilling the love that once upon a time dared not speak its name.

Scudder appears not a moment too soon, but still rather too late to rescue a movie in which Maurice and his great love, Clive (Hugh Grant), spend unconscionable amounts of screen time chastely twittering over their Cambridge teacups about the Platonic ideal of male love. Scudder also arrives on this pristine scene long after Maurice himself has dithered to death the matter of physically consummating his natural impulses.

As usual, James Ivory evokes the past -- in this case, Edwardian England -- prettily enough. But having achieved a personal best in A Room with a View, he reverts to form here. That means too reverential a regard for his literary sources (which in this minor case is unnecessary) and no respect at all for screen dynamics. He remains trapped in the same guilty spirit in which Forster wrote.

So does his movie; Maurice (pronounced Morris) is all high-mindedness and good taste. It has no emotional tension or -- heaven forfend -- strong expression of frustration or need. Occasionally an old pro like Denholm Elliott, Barry Foster or Ben Kingsley disregards directorial discretion and rips into a scene, because that's what actors are supposed to do. The young leading men, though, do not have the confidence or the clout to break through Ivory's enervated politesse.