The soundtrack for Patrice Chéreau’s film Intimacy harks back to the long-time interests of Hanif Kureishi, upon whose short story the movie is based. Kureishi’s first novel, The Buddha of Suburbia, was obsessed with David Bowie in his glam-rock years and Bowie pops up on the Intimacy soundtrack with Candidate, from 1974’s Diamond Dogs album and The Motel from 1995’s Outside.
And there is also Bowie’s old chum Iggy Pop, represented here by Consolation Prizes and, appropriately for such a sexually explicit movie, Penetration.
The London setting of the film is echoed by the inclusion of The Clash’s London Calling, and the use of such icons of Seventies British rock invokes for Kureishi, at least, the tone and feel of the urban environment. More recently composed are songs by Tindersticks (A Night In), Clinic and Eyeless in Gaza, though they are very much of the genre suggested by Bowie, The Clash et al — rock with an edge.
The second half of the soundtrack gives way to the film’s score, composed by Eric Neveux, and here the exploration of the city continues with titles such as Rainy Night in Pimlico and Last Wednesday in New Cross. The music is moody, oblique and entirely at one with the ambience of the film.