Inventing Anna is a Netflix limited series based on a true story. It follows the real events of Anna Sorokin, a convicted fraudster who goes by the alias Anna Delvey. Anna posed as a wealthy German heiress and defrauded friends, banks and hotels of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Read on to find out what we loved about the series and areas where we think it didn’t quite hit the mark.
THE GOOD: Julia Garner As Anna Delvey
Anna Sorokin is definitely a difficult character to play. She is intelligent, bratty and condescending but also extremely complex as Anna herself is playing a character, that is Anna Delvey- and Julia Garner knocked it out of the park. She embodied the whole personality of a fraudster who in confident in her manipulation, yet able to show subtle hints to inform the audience that she knows she is defrauding someone. Her dialogue delivery is amazing. It makes you hate the character, but still makes her sympathetic occasionally. Not to mention, she nailed the difficult accent Anna Sorokin has. After watching interviews with the real Anna Sorokin, its quite clear that her accent is quite unique. Though I wouldn’t say that Julia Garner got it down 100%, it was really close.
Are you pregnant or are you just so very,very fat?
That dialogue in the first few minutes alone gives the audience a summary of her character and Julia Garner delivered it flawlessly.
THE GOOD: Captivating Storytelling
I’m glad Shonda Rhimes noticed the potential of this story. With the upcoming stories on con-man and fraudsters like Tinder Swindler, Inventing Anna easily fits into the existing category and hype. Although Inventing Anna follows the same formula of telling the audience the truth beforehand, it propositions its own unique storyline about the defrauding not just people, but financial institutions like Fortress as well. Therefore, one can’t help but wonder how she achieved this so-called feat. Besides, Anna Sorokin’s was actively defrauding for 4 years (2013-2017). The fact that the series manage to keep the whole story relatively concise without making the audience lose interest is a testament to the capabilities of the writers behind this show.
THE BAD: Vivian Kent
Although Anna is the main character in the series, the story is told through the journalist, Vivian Kent who is loosely based on Jessica Pressler, the actual journalist who reported on Anna Sorokin. Vivian Kent is a difficult character to root for, and her scenes are at times, difficult to watch. Despite being a strong, ambitious, feminist lady, she sometimes take very extreme measures to get what she wants. Her obsession with the Anna Sorokin story made her manipulate Anna to reject plea, subtly blackmail others for information, neglect her unborn child, and break into someone’s house. If this show is meant to shed light on poor and unethical journalism and make the audience hate the journalist, it definitely did. However, I doubt that is the case.
THE BAD: Inaccuracies and Fictional Characters
This whole story is completely true, except for all the parts that are totally made up
Inventing Anna was not meant to be a docu-series. Therefore, we get a reminder at the start of every episode that certain parts are fictional. Nevertheless, the premise and crux of the story is to let the audience know how Anna managed to pull off her scam. After completing the series and learning more about the case, we learn that some of the main build ups of the story is not true. For example, Nora and Val are completely made-up characters. However, in the story, Nora was essential in the rise of Anna Delvey as she was the first to introduce Anna to the rich and famous and therefore, allowed Anna run through her ADF ideas with potential investors first. This leaves the audience with unanswered questions on how Anna got to where she is if those parts were untrue.
Verdict
5/10
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