How The Art Of Sarah Pulls Off A Perfect Con
The Art Of Sarah is a convoluted mess, but It’s miles better than Inventing Anna
In Farah Khan’s Om Shanti Om, it took one very lucky rebirth into a film family for Shah Rukh Khan’s Om Prakash Makhija to become the superstar Om Kapoor. In The Art Of Sarah, Kim Yong-ji’s Mok Ga-hui needs three meticulously planned rebirths to go from a department store worker to the head of a luxury brand. That is how impossible the myth of climbing the ladder is in the world of The Art Of Sarah.
At first glance, the eight-episode Netflix drama, aired in Korea under the name Lady Doir, seems like a Korean version of Inventing Anna with added thriller elements to avoid confusion with the Anna Delvey inspired show. A mysterious Jane Doe is found murdered in a sewer with her face botched beyond recognition. As detective Park Mu-gyeong (Lee Joon-hyuk) investigates her case, he uncovers the multiple fraudulent identities that the suspected victim, luxury brand executive Sarah Kim created to climb her way into the upper echelons of Korean society. Not only did she lie to everyone about her identity as an Oxford-graduated luxury magnate, but her luxury brand Boudoir also sells fake products.
It’s a gripping show, binge worthy and well written, although after a point, the multiple frauds and non-linear story structure seems to get in the way of a comprehensive story. This is where a ten or a twelve-episode structure would have worked in favour of the plot. Couldn't simplifying things have worked better? Well, yes, expect it would fall into the same trap of missing out the important things needed for a good fraud story.
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Recipe For A Perfect Fraud
See, to convince people that you are who you really are in these con artist stories, you need two things: financial currency (aka money) and cultural currency, that is, knowledge of all the unspoken etiquettes that their victims follow.
Now, most class infiltration films fulfill the need for these two things by having the con artist convince one member of the upper class to believe in their good intentions, somehow convince the person to fund them, and then kill the distruster(s) before or as soon as they realise the scam. You see it across the board, from Hollywood’s The Talented Mr. Ripley to Parasite and the Bae Suzy starring K- drama Anna. Or, if the writers choose to settle for a shortcut, the scammer mysteriously has a truck load of cash just sitting in their bank account and knows every upper-class mannerism (cough Inventing Anna cough).
Instead, The Art Of Sarah’s Mok Ga-hui takes the long route to the perfect con. In episode 2, we learn about Sarah Kim’s real identity, Mok Ga-hui, a luxury store saleswoman who is under a huge debt when she is asked to compensate for a theft during her shift. Ga-hui attempts to commit suicide by jumping into a lake, but after the attempt fails, she bounces back, determined to be “the kind of person (luxury bags) are made for”.
The Full Timeline Of The Sarah Kim Scam
We don’t see what Ga-hui does immediately after the suicide, but we know that she fakes her death to get rid of her debt. Ga-hui is next seen in the testimony of her former husband and loan shark Hong Seon-sin (Jeong Jin-yeong from Queen of Tears), where we find her working in a hostess club to entertain male guests under the name Do-a.
Do-a strikes a deal with a dying moneylender: her kidney in exchange for 500 million won (roughly 3.15 crores). Since organ transplant from a stranger is illegal in Korea and spouses must be married for at least one year before organ donation, the two get married. He gives her a new identity: a naive American-born Oxford graduate named Kim Eun-jae.
Seon-sin schools her in elite manners and access. As they grow close, Eun-jae runs a parallel con, manipulating host bar worker Kang Ji-hwon into believing she needs rescue from an abusive husband. She plants the myth of Boudoir, a “century-old” British luxury bag house while using Ji-hwon’s clients to spread the lie. To secure Seong-sin’s total trust, she orchestrates a stabbing and takes the blade for him, prompting him to leave her his fortune.
There, homework complete.
Instead of staying and pulling off a Ripley-esque murder, Eun-jae plans to leave to set up her next character. Except, like in any con drama, her identity comes into question. One of the loan sharks working under Seon-sin recognises her as Ga-hui, and before she can escape with the money, she is caught by his goons. Eun-jae is about to be killed, when the financier, in a moment of weakness for all the moments she stood by him, calls it off. Moved, she goes through with the organ donation anyway, recovers, and again goes missing with Seon-sin’s money and his cherished 500 million won pine tree.
When she resurfaces, she is Sarah Kim, ready with both the asset and the access to build Boudoir for real.
And What About The Murder?
So, The Art Of Sarah is not as much about unravelling the case as it is a commentary on the luxury industry. Lately, brands like Loro Piana have come under fire for using deceptive methods to produce their pieces. Sarah Kim’s brand, Boudoir, similarly uses fake materials to make their goods. And they’re all made by a runaway, Kim Mi-jeong (Lee Yi-dam from the recent hit Can This Love Be Translated?).
In a twisted irony, Mi-jeong aspires to be like Sarah, and when the latter gives her her own credit card and phone (because runaways get identified if they open any account), Mi-jeong starts impersonating Sarah. And in classic Ripley style, when word gets out that there’s a Sarah Kim impersonator, Mi-jeong decides to kill Sarah and go on living in her place. The attack fails, and it’s Mi-jeong who ends up dead.
I might be looking too much into it, but if that’s not a jibe at the genre, what is?
Tying Up Loose Ends
In the investigation that follows, Sarah shows up to claim that she is indeed Mi-jeon, who went ahead with the murder, so that Boudoir is not affected in any way. Since Sarah and Mi-jeon both look similar and don’t have any official records or photos (Kim Eun-jae went missing with the moneylender’s money, remember?), no one can confirm who is who.
Ga-hui, now Mi-jeong, receives a ten-year sentence for murder. The Boudoir scam is kept from being exposed. Since Sarah Kim is officially dead, it is willed to Sarah’s “friend”, a beauty brand CEO Jeong Yeo-jin (Park Bo-kyung). Boudoir lives on, selling a fake luxury product under a leader who has no idea of the scam happening under the table.
As Sarah famously says throughout the show, “If you can’t tell the fake from the real, is it really fake?”