Inventing Anna Review: A Psychological Portrait Of A Skilled Scammer Shonda Rhimes Convinces And Captivates Once Again

Starring: Anna Chlumsky, Julia Garner, Arian Moayed

Creators: Shonda Rhimes

Streaming Platform: Netflix (click to watch)

Filmhyhpe.com Ratings: 3.5/5 (three and half star) [yasr_overall_rating size=”large”]

Inventing Anna is the new Netflix miniseries by Shondal and which will be available on the platform from 11 February. We had the pleasure of previewing the first six episodes of the miniseries and we were totally fascinated. Who is Anna Delvey and how did she create her identity as a wealthy heiress and capable entrepreneur? The secret is hidden inside the head of a girl in her early twenties awaiting trial in Rikers prison, scattered among wealthy New York high society figures who are very reluctant to talk about how they met her and what Anna did to them even if no one really seems immune to its charm.

On paper, two aspects make Inventing Anna an unmissable series: the incredible scam that a girl in her early twenties has put in place, deceiving half of New York (and leaving the other half so scared as not to file a complaint) and the signature of Shonda Rhimes . Creator and co-producer of the series together with Jessica Pressler (the real journalist who wrote the reportage on which the series is based), the mother of Grey’s Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton and The Rules of the Perfect Crime is a guarantee of an exciting vision.

Inventing Anna Review: The Story

The story of Anna Delvey (Julia Garner), whose real name is actually Sorokin, opens when an enterprising journalist, Vivian (Anna Chlumsky), discovers the story and decides to investigate. Anna is in prison awaiting trial, loudly rejecting the ignominious accusation of being a scammer: how is it possible that this little girl – so apparently innocent and out of place among the other inmates – is really guilty of what she was accused of? Vivian’s first impression is that there must absolutely be a mistake, and it is with the aim of helping her – as well as telling a story that could catch the attention of her readers, of course – that she starts interviewing friends and acquaintances of the young socialite. fallen from grace.

The story she will bring to light, episode after episode, is something very different from what she had initially imagined: Anna Delvey / Sorokin has actually made her way into the New York Upper Class by pretending to be a German heiress, fooling everyone with her innate class and taste for dressing, and dragging a series of wealthy investors into the unlikely project of a super-luxury art gallery, the Anna Delvey Foundation. A charismatic young woman and an incredible story that will monopolize Vivian’s working life, she eager to redeem her career after a mistake made in the past, and that of a small group of her colleagues.

Inventing Anna Review and Analysis

As the creator of successful series, Shonda Rhimes has long understood the narrative power that unpleasant characters or characters with typically negative character traits can release, especially when it comes to female characters. Viola Davis in How to Get Away with Murder is a perfect example; one that, however, the rest of the US series tends not to replicate. Strong women on the small screen are condemned to be positive and proactive examples, often blunted in their harshness. Not infrequently, they are still portrayed as victims, see Pamela Anderson in Pam & Tommy.

Shonda Rhimes women are often arrogant more than self-confident , manipulative, unscrupulous and amoral. On paper, these characteristics should belong to Anna Sorokin, the woman at the center of this series who, through the character of Vivian, tries to reconstruct how she created Anna Delvey’s identity and why of her.

On the other hand already from the first episode, Vivian risks being even more fascinating, a journalist who cannot enjoy the arrival of her eldest daughter because she is obsessed with the idea of ​​having a big scoop in her hands, one who does not hesitate to move the cradle of her birth. to wallpaper the wall of his future room with materials inherent to the mystery of Anna. Vivian is not the fearless journalistic heroine who wants to discover the truth, but rather a woman who wants to relaunch her career at all costs, even at the expense of others, because she thinks she deserves it.

Maybe that’s why Vivian understands the potential of Anna’s story before anyone else: because, as the inmate tells her during their first interview, they both get to see people’s talent, beyond character. That is an elegant way of saying that they don’t mind being unpleasant (or treating others badly) in order to use their own assets for their own gain.

Compared to the previous Rhimes series, Inventing Anna shuns the bright and sometimes comical tone that we would expect from this sort of “Try and Catch Me” ex post. Each episode is dedicated to a cheated by Anna, telling how she approached him, conquered him and “then left behind a trail of devastation”, or so it would seem. The writing of the series is more complex than that, more cynical: Anna herself suddenly changes herself to survive, she doesn’t understand how consciously, surrounded by rich New Yorkers who in turn know how to be immensely classist, unpleasant, exploiters. Anna simply manages to use their way of thinking, their hubris, at their expense.

Its power is such that Vivian herself spends a considerable period of the investigation thinking she can clear a victim. Anna was also this: she herself suffers humiliations and deceptions, because with some exceptions New York is portrayed as a place of false courtesies but granitic wickedness, whose rich simply can afford to be about-face, arrogant, pretentious. Anna learns to play their own game, adapting so well to each interlocutor that an ever-different portrait of the girl emerges based on who she is telling her: victim, executioner, deceived, swindler, poor, rich, suspicious, immaculate.

Inventing Anna Review: The Last Words

Inventing Anna is a cynical series, sometimes dark, but nevertheless brilliant. A title that does not want so much to explain the character that is at the center, but to return the ambiguity of the character she tells, the infinite manipulative capacity of her. In this, he succeeds very well. Cynical, abrasive, irresistible: Shonda Rhimes convinces and captivates once again, giving us a series in which no one is truly innocent or really knows the truth about Anna Delvey.