Who, from a safe distance, doesn’t love a grifter? Especially if the grift is on a grand scale and the marks bring it largely upon themselves? Step forward, then, Anna Delvey – born Anna Sorokin, though that never bothered her overmuch. The apparent German heiress parlayed a quick wit, good wardrobe and non-specific Mitteleuropean accent into an entrée into New York high society. She extracted hundreds of thousands of dollars from the elite fooled by her poise, impressed by her connections and unable to imagine that anyone who knew which wine to order could not be everything she claimed to be.
Sorokin was charged with various counts of larceny and other crimes, and in April 2019 found guilty of eight of them. But what a wild ride she had, and this new Netflix dramatisation of her story enjoys every last minute of it. Inventing Anna comes from the Shonda Rhimes stable and stays within the Shondaland (her production company) comfort zone – a multilayered tale brilliantly told, at pace and with glee. It may have more heft than it initially appears, but it is played essentially as a modern soap opera – and God, is it fun. This is a show for those mainly looking to marvel – at the effrontery, the style, the steel nerves of the twentysomething weaving webs from inside a house of cards built on thin ice. Those who are looking for an in-depth, analytical take on the Delvey phenomenon, her pathology or motivations – which the handful of previous documentaries about her have lacked – will have to wait a little longer.
“This whole story that you’re about to sit on your fat ass and watch, like a big lump of nothing, is about me. You know me. Everyone knows me. I’m an icon. A legend.” Thus, in the opening seconds of Inventing Anna, do we meet our antiheroine in all her ice-cold, brutal, contemptuous, compelling glory. Who doesn’t immediately want to follow that ravening, barely containable ego and see where it ends up?
Julia Garner is mesmerising as Anna. She keeps her human enough that – like her marks, perhaps – we never lose interest or emotional investment in her, even as we watch her embark on another round of clear-eyed criminality as she works rooms, finds the next pawn in her game, moves to the next stage of her con. If, indeed, con is the right word. For her, it seems to be just a way of being – you get the impression that, like a shark who stops swimming, if she did not live a life of purloined luxury she would die. Garner’s Anna is a kaleidoscopic mixture of fury and defensiveness (when challenged or crossed), sweetness, charm, fierce intelligence and, at times, simple and ineffable weirdness – and you can’t take your eyes off her.
Just as good, in a naturally less showy part, is Anna Chlumsky as journalist Vivian Kent. (She is based on the writer Jessica Pressler, whose article about Delvey in New York magazine after her arrest brought Anna to the world’s attention, much to the chagrin of the defrauded banks, art collectors, gallery owners, fashionistas and socialites who wanted their embarrassing gullibility swept under the carpet.) We move back and forth between Kent’s interviews with Anna in prison (“Why do you dress like that?” asks Anna with a characteristic blend of contempt and concern. “You look poor”), her investigations, and scenes that show how Anna got from there (a working-class town outside Moscow) to here (Rikers Island prison, via London, Paris and New York). Besotted boyfriends, railroaded hoteliers and businesswomen who use her as a maid and don’t check their statements lead to bigger and better frauds. Until, that is, the little giveaways lead to greater suspicions, betrayed friends amass grievances that need expression, and eventually the queen of grifters is unmasked and imprisoned. You cannot, despite yourself, help wishing it could have been otherwise.
