She is strange and a bit creepy like most of the ultrarich, who step over unhoused people on their way to purchase million-dollar paintings. Garner-as-Delvey is strange and a bit creepy, but not as much as the girlboss trope itself. Garner’s portrayal of Anna might make us uncomfortable, if only because there is something deeply unnerving about the world Anna wanted so badly to be a part of. What the British Already Knew About Russell Brand The 40 Greatest Stand-Alone TV Episodes of All TimeĪmerica Is Experiencing a Confusing Avalanche of Small Boob Ads Send me updates about Slate special offers.ĭelvey begins her ascent as an aspiring girlboss and mogul, convincing people she is worthy of being made even richer by flaunting her apparently exorbitant wealth, but by the time she’s sobbing on a tennis court in Morocco, drinking Champagne and promising helicopters and 20-course dinners as all her credit cards are declined, her performance is clearly a charade, kept afloat only by the scale of her increasingly valueless self-delusion. Many of the wealthy people Anna is surrounded by are also scammers, from Fyre Festival’s Billy McFarland to pharma fraudster Martin Shkreli, but even people who have obtained their wealth legally seem bland and unexceptional, making it easy to remember they have benefited from a system built on the myth of meritocracy and designed to make the very rich even richer, a system that is arguably a con in and of itself. At the start, sunlit yachts and luxurious hotels spin a siren song, but by the middle of the show, all the money and the people who spend it so carelessly begin looking absurd. Inventing Anna plays up the lies at the heart of extreme wealth from start to finish. Lying for profit is an American tradition. It’s a tradition that runs through Ozark as well, where Garner plays another hustler trying to hit it big using illicit means, except with more guns involved. In court, Spodek argues that everyone has a bit of Anna in them, comparing her to Frank Sinatra, who used to pay women to faint at his concerts. Perhaps Garner is so disconcerting to watch because in some ways, we recognize parts of ourselves-her endless desire for more and better things she does not need, her willingness to play any role to obtain them. The one sequence that lavishes attention on her appearance is a slow-motion montage of her courtroom style choices, which is so campy, including a glowy filter and wind machine, that it feels like satire. Despite the real Delvey’s obsession with looks-one of her most powerful weapons in convincing people she was something she plainly was not-Garner’s Anna is not even particularly glamorous. Rather than inviting the audience into an intimate understanding of the character, Garner maintains a haughty, overwrought detachment from start to finish-rarely if ever showing genuine emotion, changing from a helpless victim to a ruthless narcissist in the blink of an eye when it serves her, never entirely believable in either extreme. Her mottled quasi-German accent is harsh and grating, except for the few times it breaks during emotional scenes, letting a hint of Delvey’s native Russian accent slip through. Garner’s Delvey is not all that magnetic or even particularly believable. Her unsettling and opaque performance embodies the emptiness at the heart of Delvey’s story.Īt first glance, Garner, best known for her role as the fiery Ruth on Ozark, might seem like an unlikely choice for Anna, a grifter who charmed her way through New York’s extraordinarily discerning social scene.
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