Cover Story by Susan Rigetti

Inspired by the con artist ´Anna Delvey´ Cover Story by Susan Rigetti plays very well a game of smoking mirrors. There is so much smoke that one can hardly realize that from the first quarter onwards that´s just a well oiled play we are witnessing.Typical con artist tricks.

Lora Ricci is a naive wannabe fashion journalist who got a summer internship to ELLE. There she meets and is getting fascinated by one Cat Wolff, a socialite of Russian-Austrian origin, the daughter of a clean energy businessman. 

Through fragments of diary, dialogues of FBI agents and email exchanges between ´Cat´ and her brother in Moscow, we can make ourselves an idea of where the story goes. But you should wait until the last line to realize what was all about.

Cover Story has a touch of mystery but as it relies on second hand accounts and lacking completely real time dialogues it may feels artificious. But all my critiques, including towards the Lora character, as reflected in her diary - who plays a substantial part in the narrative -  although literarily legit, do not stand the ending. 

Rating: 3.5 stars

My April Movie Selection

There are only a couple days from April left, and - at least for me - looks like time speeds up. In a way, it makes sense, after two years of slow down, it was about time. This month I had my first out-of-Berlin holiday and decided to spend a lot of time learning (even) more languages, or improving some, therefore the purchase of a lifelong Rosetta Stone plan made sense. May I have a long life, long enough to go through all the languages of the app - ok, not all, as I am more than familiar with at least 7 of them, but still...

In movie terms, the month went smoothly, but I may confess that I watched a lot of crap. I have a ´tradition´ of paying once the month a Netflix subscription, in order to watch all those movies everyone and their pets are talking about. And it happened but, well...I got the crap too. Most of the other movies I´ve watched this month were as bad as Netflix, but the month got saved yesterday, as I watched Django by Etienne Comar which is excellent both in terms of story and play.

I need some good, intellectual, smart movie detox for the next month or no movie at all. Also, I wish to watch more movies set in the languages I am trying to learn and improve therefore, maybe I will be luckier this time. At least, there are some linguistic gains...

Here it is, my curated selection of movies for the sunny month of April.

Netflix Selection

One month paid Netflix subscription is not the best money investment, but my mentalities studies do need some insights into what people really watch. Or, in a more honest vein, I do like trash sometimes. 

My visual fastfood included two ´popular´ series and a movie, featuring a con-character of our times...

Inventing Anna

There is a maladive fascination with this person, Anna Delvey/Sorokina but unfortunately the missing point in my opinion is the psychiatric help this person needs. I´ve previously read the book wroten by an ex-friend and in a way it was enough. She went to prison, paid the debts, is about to be free...etc. Why so much glamour around her? Why turn her into a Robin Hood whose path to startdom was allowed by the fake rich white elites? Is stealing money - from the rich - faking being rich a social bravery? And fictionised or not, this person needs help, not for coning more people or becoming a popular victim of immigration policies eventually...But because it is the only way to empathize with such a case.

Tinder Schwindler

If you ever been on Tinder - been there and, with no exception, I only dealt with douchebags - you want to figure out persons like Simon Leviev, the character of the reality show Tinder Schwindler. If there is one single point Inventing Anna is outling, there is that con-women may be more exposed and subsequently punished than men. Leviev belongs to the same category, but his time in prison was shorter and right now is playing the crypto expert and has a model gf. Meanwhile, he left bankrupt a bunch of women he met on Tinder where he was displaying high-end billionaire credentials. Anyone into online dating should see this movie, because, you never know when you can become a victim. 

My Unorthodox Life

I am interested in story featuring the phenomenon of OTD therefore My Unorthodox Life featuring entrepreneur Julia Haart and her family sounded as a great way to spend some binging days. In her early 40s, she left her Orthodox Jewish family in Monsey and started her own business in the modelling industry. Three of her kids followed her and are more or less religious, while the youngest remained religious and with his father. She eventually remarried with an non-Jewish entrepreneur with whom she looks like the match made in Heaven in the reality show. In fact, shortly after the movie finished, she requested a restriction order for him. Her other daughter, Batscheva, also divorced after the end of the reality show mini-series.

Although I appreciate Haart´ strength and motivation and her unique achievement of ruling the dice in a very exclusivisitic business environment, and doing it in only a couple of years, I was appalled by the vulgarity. I understand the hate some - especially women - may have after leaving a very insular world - however, her family is not purely Hasidic, just yeshivish - particularly for the time spent within communities not encouraging education and a certain conservative lifestyle, but there are always human limits of honesty going beyond any religious background. Publicly discussing about her son-in-law sexual clumsiness or going in the conservative Monsey for shopping in a kosher store, in the middle of the day, dressed as for a night clubbing in a sex club is a matter of (self)respect, Or lack thereof. 

Also, it looked so fake the difference between what you see - the happy mixed family - and what really happened in this family. Haart just launched her memoir but although I devour this kind of stories, I am not sure I really want another portion of vulgarity into my life.

NOT RECOMMENDED

As I mentioned before, I had a lot of disappointments in terms of movies this month. Disappointments as of the very time-wasting kind.

Here are the movies that I don´t recommend at all:

Don Quichote featuring Carmen Argenziano. It is introduced as an adventure movie but it makes Don Quichote looks like he is a mentally confused person trying to escape an old home care facility. Over and over again. 

A Brother´s Love (La Femme de Mon Frère) a Canadian movie by Mona Chokri featuring a maladive dependency between an unemployed girl with academic credentials and her charmeur brother who fell in love with her obgyn doctor, while he accompanied her for an abortion. The only win is that I´ve heard some Canadian movie.

Mossad, the film - A parody featuring Tsahi Halevi from Fauda, is probably the worst Israeli movie I ever seen. Halevi is a good actor and also an interesting person, but this movie makes everyone looks like has a kind of mental limitation in understanding the world...Not the kind of Israeli Bond one may dream of anyway.

But there have been at least two movies that are worth watching those days

M. Butterfly

Based on a true story that shaked the French diplomacy at the end of the 1980s, L´Affaire Boursicot M.Butterfly is a story of betrayal, spying, love and diplomacy. Jeremy Irons plays the Boursicot with a kind of theatre emphasis that I´ve found sometimes too emotional, but good nevertheless. It also made me think a lot about how easy love lit by passion make people blind, and in this case, blindness is lethal. A hard to believe but real story.

Django

There are not enough movies featuring Roma, and Django by Etienne Comar with Reda Kateb from A Prophet is one small contribution. Kateb, which is Franco-Algerian, plays Django Reinhardt, during his episode while he was trying to escape from the Nazi-occupied French to Switzerland. His efforts were unsuccessful and he had to play few times for a Nazi audience in exchange of his survival, although his people was deported. The movie, and the play reflect the ambivalence of the times and of an artist´s choice in general. Also, there are some details to follow about playing music during the Nazi times.

The True Story of a Fake Heiress

`New York attracts such a wild range of people: artists and bankers, immigrants and transients, old money and new money, people wanting to be discovered and others who never want to be found. But without exception the people have texture, and texture is character, and character is fascinating`.

Among those New Yorkers, Anna Delvey, introducing herself as a German heiress with a millionaire father, an impressive trust fund, expensive tastes but no job. At her crude age of 26, she wanted to open an art center and was faking hard work meeting lawyers and investors. In New York, there are many things that can come true. 

At a different level, ´Anna Delvey´ is a glossy version of Elizabeth Holmes from Bad Blood: Secret and lies in a Silicon Valley Startup, a drop-up that was promising a revolution in the medical technology, got the impressive support of top decision makers and a significant amount of funding, but never delivered her promise.

My Friend Anna is the story of a failed friendship between the ´heiress´ and the author, former photo editor at Vanity Fair. Naively mesmerized by Delvey, Williams become her company during her gourmet dinners, expensive spa and shopping sprees. All went well until she accepted to go on a all-paid trip to Morocco where Delvey´s cards started to get declined and she offered - or was invited to offer herself - to pay over 60k for their stay, with the promise of a late reimbursement. Which, in fact, never happened. 

Anna - Sorokin, on her real family name, originary from Russia whose family of modest upringing emigrated to Germany - succeeded to steal around 275,000$, mostly unpaid bills and loans. In the end, Williams, one year after being promised to get her money back, become part of the investigation that sent the ´heiress´ to prison. 

Both ´Delvey´ and Williams are the victims of their own environment - ´We all want to be included. We crave validation, from friends and from strangers´. The so-called socialite was in fact a lonely girl, unable to interact properly with people from her supposed milieu, a looney with an alcohol problem and some serious mental issues too.

Williams´ memoir - who confesses that at a certain extent wanted to be like Anna, confident, free spirit...how easy those big words can be misleading - has many personal details and can be easily read as a real-life thriller. I would have been curious to find out more about other people that Anna was hanging out, but Williams focused the writing on her own story and the never-ending exchange of messages while trying to recover her money. It was a deliberate choice which limits the understanding of the Anna character. What actually was wrong with this girl?

Maybe there will be a different story about that bizarre con artist one day.

Rating: 3 stars