A moderately engaging fraud, the nine-episode miniseries “Inventing Anna” brings up the question of focus, and sending a true-scam narrative down intersecting tracks.
I think the thinking behind the story structure here goes like this. Netflix subscribers are being asked to stick with nine-plus hours of peculiar true-crime developments as packaged by miniseries creator Shonda Rhimes. The episodes map out the Manhattan chicanery of cryptic German socialite Anna Delvey, who was really Anna Sorokin, played by Julia Garner of “Ozark” (and “The Assistant”! She’s great in “The Assistant”).
The Netflix series, which reportedly paid Sorokin more than she was imprisoned for stealing, is a fictionalized gloss of true events, as told in New York magazine writer Jessica Pressler’s popular Delvey profile. The 2018 story detailed a fool’s parade of high-flying financial, social, media and tech suckers who believed their snide, weirdly compelling new friend’s dreams of creating a Soho House for an even more insufferable crowd. (Pardon my raging class issues.)
