Inventing Anna Falls Short
Inventing Anna left viewers questioning if the show really portrayed the story as best as it could have. Credit: pexels
“Maybe She Had So Much Money She Just Lost Track Of It” proclaims the title of the infamous New York magazine article that launched Anna Delvey. She became known as the complex figure who scammed the elites of New York City into thinking that she was a German heiress. She did this all while avoiding bills, faking wire transfers and almost attaining multimillion dollar loans for her dream Soho House-esque club.
Inventing Anna opens with shots of the aforementioned article being printed, as Delvey stares at us with disheveled hair and wide eyes, as portrayed by Julia Garner. “Rich” by Megan Thee Stallion plays in the background, in what seems like a perfect choice despite the disappointment of the awkwardness that always comes with a censored version of a song. This seems emblematic of the problems of the show as a whole: it takes what has so much energy and interest and waters it down into something just ‘okay.’
The show itself, which proclaims to be “... completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up,” attempts to tell the story of Delvey, whose real last name is Sorokin, in all the moments leading up to the printing of the article and eventual jail time.
As Alex Abad-Santos points out in his article for Vox, the advertising Netflix put out for the series, like posting giant receipts on the walls of the Gansevoort Hotel with the all caps line proclaiming, “SPENT $36,000 ON A SINGLE DINNER. BUT NEVER PAID THE BILL,” promised a much more exciting show than was delivered.
There definitely are displays of luxury in the show: spontaneous trips to Morocco, designer clothes hauls and celebrity workout classes to name a few. But the show seems to be stuck on where to take a definitive moral ground. Instead of either playing into the indulgent legend of Delvey or condemning her as a “symptom of capitalism,” as Nandini Balial concluded, there is a weird attempt at not committing to either.
Even Vivian Kent (Anna Chlumsky), the journalist covering the original article that made Delvey so popular, said her story ended up trying to be, “something about class, social mobility… Identity under capitalism. I don’t know.” In the end she admits that maybe she never even really had a grasp on the real story, and that confusion is definitely evident in the writing.
In some moments, Delvey is depicted as the quintessential girl boss doing whatever she needs to do to start her business. In other moments she is a backstabbing liar who is using her friends. Perhaps, Delvey really is both of these things, but the way these situations are written tends to muddle her character instead of creating a complex vision. It is as if the show wanted to play into the satisfaction that comes from displays of luxury funded through the deception of a woman, but was too afraid to fully commit and decided to add some moral that doesn’t fully work.
Still, Garner’s depiction of Delvey is one of the best elements of the show. I have heard people proclaim her accent as bad, but the mix of Russian, German and general vocal fry (as Garner herself articulated on Jimmy Fallon) is perfectly obnoxious.
Meanwhile, the dual storyline of Kent’s attempt to find the story often left me wanting to just get back to the world of Delvey already. The show’s insistence on trying to make us care about this journalist was just not compelling. She encompasses the confused morals of how to view Delvey, becoming almost obsessed with her at some points and dismissing her in others. This culminates in what perhaps can be justified as “letting the viewer decide” what they think, but avoids culpability in truly holding a positive or negative view of Delvey.
Inventing Anna had great potential to display a complex woman that the internet both loves to love and loves to hate, however, despite some great displays of acting, it ends up falling short in its confused morals.