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Chekhov's Sea Gull -- are we to believe Jo-Ann saw Marie play Nina?


Moretz's character, Jo-Ann, who is only nineteen, mentions that she and her parents have seen Maria in a production of Chekhov's Sea Gull, and that her parents thought she was "the best Nina they had ever seen."

There are two main female characters in The Sea Gull: Mme. Arkadina, a famous actress of certain age, a grande dame who is in love with a famous and much younger playwright; and Nina, a teenage girl who aspires to be an actress, and whose family are neighbors to Arkadina's country estate.

Arkadina's son Konstantin Gavrilovich, who is also an aspiring playwright, is in love with Nina and casts her in a truly awful play-within-a-play, which they perform for his mother, her lover, and all the workers, tenants, and neighbors of the estate.

Are we to believe that Marie played Nina while she was in her late thirties? That part as written is a very young and very innocent girl, more the age of Moretz's character.

Binoche's Marie, an aging but still beautiful and glamorous actress who is coming to grips with the fact that she is not as young as she once was, bears a remarkable resemblance to Chekhov's character of Arkadina. When Jo-Ann said she had seen Marie in the The Sea Gull, I immediately assumed she had been playing Arkadina and thought it was an inspired allusion. When Jo-Ann said "Nina," I gasped, then turned to my wife and said, "No, that's all wrong. Nina's a teenager."

Assuming that Assayas and Binoche know their Chekhov, what are we to make of this strange casting?

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Thanks for the information in your post. I confess (regrettably) that I am not familiar with Chekhov's work. Maybe Assayas should have brushed up on the play before he referenced it.

Sorry if I repeat things I've said in other posts:

I think Jo-Ann's character is ill-conceived. It's as if Assayas didn't think it through. She supposedly "hasn't done much" in acting, except for a super hero role, yet she is a "superstar." (??). (When Maria and Val go to see Jo-Ann's movie, is it the one that made Jo-Ann a superstar?) If she hasn't done much, how did she become Val's favorite actress? If Assayas wanted us to credibly take Val's admiration for Jo-Ann's acting seriously, why did he present us with the dumb clip ("I fell madly in love with Sargon.")? Does Val really admire Jo-Ann's acting or is she just goading Maria, who doesn't take Val's opinions seriously? Jo-Ann is supposedly classically trained but she says "di-nint" instead of "didn't." Also, her parents were musicians, yet she tells Chris Giles that, aside from a few things that her parents spoon fed her, she knows nothing about music.

?????

I do like this movie, though




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I don't think it was a mistake about the play. No one who's seen, read, or studied the play would forget what a young ingenue Nina was.

If it was a mistake by Assayas, it would involve losing track of the relative chronology of his characters' lives: When Jo-Ann was 15, Marie was ______. But that's hard to accept, either.

The more I think of this, the more I think the "mistake" was Marie's, to accept the offer to play Nina when she was more of an age to play Arkadina. It echoes her reluctance to give up the role of the younger woman and instead play the older woman in the revival of Melchior's play.

But maybe it wasn't a mistake. Who am I to say? At least Jo-Ann and her musician parents were impressed.

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It's possible Assayas just lost track of his characters' ages.

Then again, Maria could have pulled off playing a much younger character on stage since there are no close-ups.

I like your theory that Maria may have been resisting (for years) the idea of aging by playing roles that were too young for her.

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I find it hard to believe that Assayas does not know his Chekhov and made a mistake. Rather it's that Jo-Ann is being obsequious and is flattering Maria to win her over. As Val said in the car after the meeting, Maria liked Jo-Ann because she spent the evening flattering her. Maria played Nina but doesn't question the truth of Jo-Ann's statement because she is getting approval and she loves it, especially coming from someone of the younger generation.

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Did they really say that she played Nina?

I just finished watching the film and I read The Sea Gull last spring but I don't recall that scene saying that she played the role of Nina; only that Jo-Ann had seen it.

We try but we didn't have long
We try but we don't belong...


-Hot Chip (Boy from School)

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