Who is Anna Delvey? Even after her article is published, Vivian is still asking that question. So in the penultimate episode of Inventing Anna, she goes to drastic measures. She flies to Germany and tracks down Anna’s parents to try to determine the truth of the woman behind the persona.
Life In A Small Town
Even after her exposé is published, Vivian can’t let the mystery of Anna Delvey go. And who can blame her? It’s human nature to want answers. We hear about crimes, and we don’t just want to know who did them. We want to know why. How does a someone turn into an Anna Delvey? Someone who doesn’t really care about others and is willing to do just about anything to get their way.
Are con artists born, or are they made? If we can get to the why Anna went down her path, we can prevent future Annas from being born. Or, at the very least, we can maybe see them coming. But the unfortunate truth is that “why” is an easy question without an easy answer. Try as we might, we often never know why people turn out the way they do. The human psyche is a mystery. Particularly when the psyche in question is as enigmatic as Anna’s.
Still, Vivian is determined to try to get answers, and so she travels to Germany. While there, she envisions what a young Anna Sorokin might have been like. She interviews those who knew her as a young girl, and the picture they paint is as contradictory and cryptic as the woman is as an adult. In that respect, I suppose Anna Delvey was fully formed when she arrived on the New York shores.
She even tracks down the con woman’s parents, having convinced herself that Anna’s father was everything from a mobster to an oligarch to a sex trafficker of his own daughter. What she finds is much less – and much more – than she imagined. He isn’t some mysterious Russian godfather. He’s just a regular man. A man who loved his daughter. Who never understood her. And who loves her still but has had to come to terms with the fact that she was always a stranger living under his roof.
With no more answers than she arrived with, Vivian leaves Germany resolved not to write her follow-up article. Because the truth is, she’ll never get to the heart of how the Anna Delveys of the world are made. And maybe she’s right, that no child should hear their parents describe them the way Anna’s do. But the sad fact is, there’s a good chance that Anna wouldn’t care, even if she did.
The Game Never Ends
Because if there’s one thing that we can expect of Anna, it’s that she will never, ever stop. She will always look for the next angle. She’ll always be working a percentage. Even when she seems to overdose on pills and champagne. It’s all still part of the con. She needs to extend her visa, which is about to expire, and checking into rehab will put a temporary hold on it. And if an apparent suicide attempt garners her a little sympathy and makes it more likely people will put their guard down around her? All the better.
There’s no question she’s plotting her next move while in rehab. It’s what she does. But what that next move would be, we’ll likely never know. Because while she’s making her plans, Rachel is too. And for once, Anna is out-maneuvered. Rachel tricks her into leaving rehab early, and she’s arrested as soon as she steps off the property.
Anna will finally have to pay for her crimes, it seems. But I have no doubt that, while she may be down, she’s not out yet.
Inventing Anna is streaming now on Netflix.
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