One Afternoon on a Steamy Film Set in Lombardy

On a sunny Saturday in June I escaped the men’s fashion show schedule in Milan for exactly four hours for a visit to the film set where one of my favourite books of recent years, André Aciman’s ‘Call Me by Your Name’, was being adapted to the screen. The shoot was taking place at the rather stunning, castle-like Villa Albergoni in a town called Moscazzano. “The house happens to be for sale,” said the producer, who thought I could be interested. Perhaps they thought I was a wealthy foreigner? Luca Guadagnino, the lauded director, was enjoying a sparkling mineral water in the shade of a giant old tree on the front lawn. This movie, he said, would be his last in a trilogy of films that take as their subject rich foreigners in Italy, ‘I Am Love’ and ‘A Bigger Splash’ being the first two in the series.

They had been filming for five weeks: today was the last day. They were shooting the trailer. On the terrace adjoining the house stood a peach tree full of ripe fruit. “You remember the peach scene,” said Guadagnino, with not even a hint of a question mark in his intonation. I said no, I didn’t. I had read the book in the summer of 2007, the year of its release. I recalled 248 pages of sultry longing between an adolescent man and a slightly older “friend of the family” to a backdrop of a sweaty summer holiday in Italy. But nine years on I barely remembered anything else, except that the older guy was nick-named “billowy” thanks to his ballooning shirts. In my recollection, the longing went on and on and on, and in the end nothing substantial materialised in terms of outspoken affection or sex. How time’s a cheat!

“You don’t remember the peach scene???” he repeated, this time with three question marks. No, I did not remember what he then described: the picking of a peach, the older guy ejaculating over the peach, the younger guy eating the peach. Nor did I remember the party scene at the pond, which they had, he said, shot the previous night, where the younger guy had sex with a female friend.

We walked around the set – a gorgeous, late-twentieth-century time warp. The fridge, covered in wood-print adhesive plastic, could have stood in the messy kitchen of my childhood. In the study, on dad’s desk, was a typewriter and a bright plastic landline phone. The piano in the living room was charmingly out of tune. Everything reminded me of the house I grew up in, but I guess that’s what good set dressing does – it takes you back to a special place.

I decided not to buy the house, although I knew that the price could go up considerably following the release of ‘Call Me by Your Name’, the same way that each of the settings of Guadagnino’s previous films (the incredible Villa Necchi in Milan, the setting of ‘I Am Love’; the Tenuta Borgia on the island of Pantelleria, where he shot ‘A Bigger Splash’) have since become attractions for discerning tourists.

The new film’s lead actor, Armie Hammier, wasn’t around today. But its other star, a young man called Timothée Chalamet, was trotting around bare-chested. “He’s the true discovery of the film,” said Guadagnino, somewhat in awe. “He’s been amazing.” The young actor kindly came over and asked how my day had been so far before returning to work: a close up of the aforementioned peach tree, Timothée’s hand coming into the frame, hesitating for a moment, then picking the peach.

I returned to Milan, where, with a bit of rushing and running, I was just in time to see the Versace show, which – and I am not making this up – opened with a big nylon coat, billowing, in a very cinematographic way.