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?