ANNA SOMEONE ELSE ALTOGETHER

SERIES IN REVIEW

CON ARTIST FOOLED THE WORLD UNTIL THE END

By PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Anna was the perfect combination of mystery and con and sweet fraudulent innocence making the rounds for what New York City does best.

Julia Garner plays phony socialite Anna in the nine part streaming series about Anna Sorkin. Anna came from modest means, but she pretended to be a rich heiress of old European money so that she could secure lavish treatment by the city’s inner circles.

Garner transforms into the fraudster with an accent and a complex aloof demeanor that persuades acquaintances to befriend her, and in some cases pay her way through an expensive hotel living and fancy dining lifestyle befitting rich socialites to whom the city has grown accustom.

Anna’s premise is that she has a $60 million trust account in a European bank as collateral for money advances and credit cards and the generosity of newfound friends. The bureaucratic delay in processing confirmation of the assets in the trust provides Anna time to obtain advances and spend other people’s money.

Garner shares screen time with Anna Chlumsky, who plays magazine journalist Vivian Kent.

The narrative flashes back as the journalist fills in the background facts and chases down the story leads based in part on prison interviews with Anna. Anna has been detained pending trial for fraud.

And just when the past catches up to Anna, the journalist narrative leaps into the future as Kent seeks an explanation in Europe from the fraudster’s parents, who are revealed to be living in surroundings befitting their modest means.

Directors David Frankel (2 episodes), Ellen Kraus (2) Nzingha Stewart (2) Tom Verica (2) and Daisy von Scherler Mayer (1) make seamless blends of these contradictory worlds, although everything only begins to make sense after a bit. 

The episodes vary in runtime, with several episodes exceeding episodic television time but not quite reaching feature length movie time.

Several episodes also seem redundant, while covering new facts of yet another fraud, the dramatizations occur well after everyone has already got the idea of the scam, like skipping payment for the room at a second and third New York luxury hotel.

In this sense, the fraud becomes the narrative device, and people are left to wonder why authorities took so long to catch the con artist (in part because she fit in so well within New York social circles).

Apart from that overproduction, the series is well produced with each episode working well as standalone programs while creating just enough curiosity about what will happen next.

The script is good, although the redundancy of the material detracts from the overall impact. For example, the third and fourth frauds are manufactured by Anna much the same way as the first fraud, with Anna professing to have access to the trust fund, and ‘I’ll pay you later’ or ‘I’ll get right on that’ protestations to business associates and friends footing her share of the bill for spontaneous excess and luxury.

Katie Lowes does a good job as the befuddled close friend and confident who so wants to believe in the truth of the scam that she herself advances Anna $60,000 on her business credit card for an exotic vacation with friends.

The ensemble cast members fit well on the screen and provide several authentic character studies for the limited screen time provided to them for their performances.

Kate Burton plays real socialite with real money, Nora Radford. Nora is at first quite aloof and treats Anna as a servant girl, but Nora soon also falls for the con artist, giving her access to her lines of credit to run errands for her. Anna runs the errands well enough, but she buys a few items for herself at the same time.

The series becomes compelled forward through the high level of the acting performances as new characters are introduced just as others are eliminated by Anna moving forward into bigger and better lies based on the connection to the people she has already made.

Interest in the series is maintained in part by the episodes frequently changing locations such as from the prison interviews in the present to the hotel fraud in the past to the newsroom discussions about the story leads.

Inventing Anna is streaming on Netflix.