Femme-Fatale Frauds: A Review of Inventing Anna and the Dropout

[摘要] Inventing Anna. Netflix; 2022. Frenkel, D, Verica, T, von Scherler Mayer, D, Kuras, E, Stewart, N, directors. Rhimes, S, creator and producer.The Dropout. Hulu; 2022. Showalter, M, Gregorini, F, Watson, E, directors. Meriwether, E, creator. Reviewed by Karen B. Rosenbaum, MD, and Susan Hatters Friedman, MDfraudforensic psychiatryfilmsuicidefemale psychopathyAnna Sorokin’s story is cleverly told through Shonda Rhimes’ Inventing Anna on Netflix beginning with, “This whole story, the one you’re about to sit on your fat ass and watch like a big lump of nothing is about me.” Each episode has the qualifier, “This whole story is completely true. Except for all the parts that are totally made up.” The series is based on the article by the reporter Jessica Pressler who interviewed Ms. Sorokin in Rikers as she was awaiting trial, as well as some of her friends and victims.1 The Anna Sorokin character comes to life through actress Julia Garner of Netflix’s Ozark fame, with an endearing enigmatic accent that has Russian undertones. The reporter character, Vivian Kent, is based on Jessica Pressler and is played by Anna Chlumsky of Veep and the unforgettable 1991 film My Girl. In the series, Vivian Kent is pregnant and attempting to regain her reputation after a career difficulty; she sees Anna Sorokin’s story as a way for her own career to be revived. She is sympathetic to the protagonist Anna, who has a way of seeing into people that helps her to charm and defraud them. As forensic psychiatrists, we are often similarly empathic toward the people we are interviewing who are in bad situations of their own making.

[学科分类] 儿科学

[关键词] fraud;forensic psychiatry;film;suicide;female psychopathy