Around three or four years ago, Luca Guadagnino began to look at far-flung properties by the (already small) town of Crema, Italy, where he lived. He phrases the decision in his now-recognizably dreamy way: “I’d been flirting with the idea of becoming a gentleman of the countryside,” says the Italian film director, known for “I Am Love” and “A Bigger Splash.”

Upon the suggestion of an acquaintance, he visited Villa Albergoni, a run-down 17th-century estate in Lombardy, and “found it immediately beautiful, and a little bit sad, even.” He briefly considered buying it; then, some time later, he came across the movie script for “Call Me by Your Name,” based on the 2007 novel by André Aciman. Although the book takes place in Liguria, on the Mediterranean Sea, Guadagnino’s mind wandered back to the villa. He decided to set his version there, with the permission of the house’s owners.

“First of all, I had to make sure the villa felt alive, that it felt beloved,” Guadagnino says. “I also had to convey the period, because the movie unfolds in 1983, and to get everything right in terms of the characters’ psychology.” He turned to his friend the interior designer Violante Visconti di Modrone — “a woman of incredible elegance and wisdom.”

“I hadn’t done set decorating before,” Visconti di Modrone recalls, “and I thought this would be particularly difficult because the villa was enormous, and mostly empty.” She spent slightly more than a month gathering furniture and paintings from antique shops, and selecting assorted tchotchkes from her father’s house. She ultimately put together an inimitable home for the Perlman family as backdrop for the action.