gravitas ventures – Cinematic Slant

How Gravitas Ventures is selling a movie about finding who you are.

Gillian Jacobs stars as Kate in I Used To Go Here, the new movie from writer/director Kris Rey. Unlike many of her female friends, Kate has not moved on to marriage and motherhood but instead has just ended a long relationship at the same time her new novel is published. That leads to an invitation to speak at her alma mater, a trip that brings with it all manner of emotions. Kate falls in with a group of students and bonds with them while she tries to figure out what she wants to do with her life and who she wants to be.

The campaign from Gravitas Ventures isn’t massive but it sells a charming movie that might offer something new to a familiar story, all of it anchored by Jacobs’ charm.

The Posters

Kate, of course, is featured at the top of the one poster. Alongside her is David (Jemaine Clement), the professor at her old school who invites her to visit and speak to his class and who might be a romantic interest for Kate. At the bottom, the group of students she gets involved with are shown having a good time and leaning against an old station wagon.

The Trailers

The first trailer (24,000 views on YouTube) debuted on IndieWire in July. it starts off with Kate having obviously just come through a breakup and dealing with the detritus of that relationship. Others around her are getting married or are pregnant, and despite having just published her first book it’s not doing very well. A trip to her old college results in a job offer to teach there, which leads to all sorts of awkward encounters with the much younger kids who are now students as Kate tries to start over and find herself in this new situation.

Online and Social

Doesn’t appear to be any online presence for the film. Not wholly surprising.

Advertising and Promotions

This, like a host of other movies, was meant to debut at 2020’s SXSW Film Festival before it was canceled because of the Covid-19 outbreak. Gravitas acquired the film in mid-June and announced an August VOD release.

Media and Press

There wasn’t a whole lot of pre-release press activity either. Jacobs appeared on “Late Night” to talk about the movie and her own college experiences but that seems to be a good percentage of the media effort.

Overall

The poster doesn’t do much to set the movie apart from others like it that have told stories of people in their 30s or 40s who are struggling with the disconnect between who they are and who they thought they’d be. And it’s not helped by a lack of activity on other fronts, or by the fact that SXSW likely would have given it a bit of a boost in terms of word of mouth.

So it falls on the trailer to do most of the heavy-lifting and encourage people to find it on VOD platforms. It’s up to that task, doing a good job of showing Jacobs’ ability to be troubled at the same time she’s confident. It’s gotten short-shrift for various pandemic-related reasons, but it looks like a movie worth checking out.