Minghellaspoitation. Fiennes is great when he is revelling in making cruel asides and sneering, though.
Step back from it and think. Watch it impartially when the movie carts out, for example, its fourth scene of naked rutting (excuse me, lovemaking) — as the violins soar — and the lovers climax — and bombs drop on wartime London — and plaster dribbles to the floor of their little hideaway. By the third time it's already become ridiculous.
— Mick LaSalle (SFGATE)
The novel is a largely interior affair, existing inside Maurice’s mind as he ponders again and again how a woman could seem so close and then suddenly be so far away. The film, on the other hand, is as hangdog as Stephen Rea’s face in the first scene.
The movie gives Maurice and Sarah one last getaway—the last temptation of Sarah—before she trudges to her end. Some have objected to that change by Jordan, but I think it works—Sarah’s martyrdom only gains meaning when we are given a palpable sense of what is lost.
— Elbert Ventura (Reverse Shot)
Synopsis: On a rainy London night in 1946, novelist Maurice Bendrix has a chance meeting with Henry Miles, husband of his ex-mistress Sarah, who abruptly ended their affair two years before. Bendrix's obsession with Sarah is rekindled; he succumbs to his own jealousy and arranges to have her followed.