Last March, I flew to South Korea for a trip, which takes about 24 hours from Ireland, all in. My game plan was to line up a range of recent Oscar-winners and watch all the movies that everyone was buzzing about in one go. Upon finding my seat, I met my two seat-mates, a very sweet elderly Korean couple who took a liking to me as I was raised Catholic and they were returning from a month long pilgrimage around religious sites in Europe. The lady asked me to help her with her screen and I spent a while trying to find something for her to watch in Korean or with subtitles. Surprisingly, there was very little for her to choose from so we eventually gave up. This, however, meant that she turned to look at the screen I had turned on and began watching it with me. I was very painfully aware that a religious granny was observing me watch, “Call Me By Your Name.” I had heard enough about the movie to guess when scenes she might not approve of were coming and, as I feared their approach, I paused the film, leaving it on a still of the idyllic town in which it is set. I began fumbling around with my things as I had become aware that she was slowly falling asleep, and I waited it out for it to happen. As her eyes got heavy, she looked away from the screen and to me and smiled, “What a beautiful place,” she said in Korean, moments before she fell asleep.
I couldn't agree more with this sentiment. The setting of the film is utterly dreamlike and lovely, as was necessary to tell the nostalgic story of a first love that takes place during a summer holiday abroad and evoke the magic of what that feels like. Adapted for the screen from a novel by André Aciman that was published in 2007, the story is set in the summer of 1983 and tells the tale of an American teenager named Elio, who is summering in Italy with his family, the Perlmans. His father, an archaeologist, invites a grad student named Oliver to come join him on a nearby dig and he stays with their family. What follows is the story of how Elio and Oliver fall in love.
While the setting is ambiguously described as, “Somewhere in Northern Italy,” at the beginning of the movie, it was actually shot primarily in Crema and the surrounding province of Cremona, in Lombardy. This is a lovely part of Northern Italy, not far from Milan, and the popularity of the film and its cultural significance have meant that even more visitors have begun seeking it out in the past year. If you want to visit the incredibly pretty town in which this Oscar-winning, sure-to-be-future-classic film was shot and fall in love with it for yourself (and maybe even have your own summer fling), just browse our holiday rentals in Lombardy.
The director of the film, Luca Guadagnino, moved the setting of, “Call Me By Your Name,” from a Ligurian village, as it is in the book on which the movie is based, to an area he knew well instead. His own home is near Crema and he chose it as a destination because, as he told Amuse, it, “has a sense of timelessness that I like, but I also think that it is quintessentially Italian without being an idea of Italy. It’s just Italy. A lot of these Hollywood movies made in Italy look as fake as a chocolate coin. For me it’s important you make the thing that looks the most correct and the most real.”
Crema is a picturesque town with elegant neoclassical piazzas, a pretty Duomo, little streets, and colourful, brightly-painted homes. It is surrounded by a stunning countryside landscape that is made up of lush forestry and pastures, with staggering mountain views in the background. The primary location in the film is the Perlman holiday home, which was shot at a historic uninhabited villa in the village of Moscazzano, situated just a few minutes from Crema. In scenes where the two main characters, Elio and Oliver, head into town and read out in a piazza, they are in the Piazza Duomo in Crema itself – at a table that remains set out the same way for tourists – and landmarks such as the town's cathedral and the Arch of Torrazzo feature in the background of the movie. The archaeological dig that brought Oliver to Italy takes them to the Grottoes of Catullus in Sirmione on the Brescian shores of Lake Garda, which is around 45 minutes from town. Other scenes are set in other nearby villages like Pandino, Montodine and Ripalta, the Bergamo scenes were, naturally, filmed in Bergamo, and the train station scenes were filmed at Pizzighettone.
If you were so inclined, there really is a whole tour of stunning sites to visit in the area that all feature in the film but are truly well-worth seeing in their own right as well. Just browse our rentals in Lombardy, our holiday rentals on Lake Garda, or our vacation rentals in Italy and get planning a road trip to take them in and see them for yourself and you will quickly understand how magical the area is and why is was chosen as the place to film such a beautiful love story.
Photo credit: MarkusMark / CC BY-SA 3.0