Until then, we only knew the official version, that of the court of Soissons, in Aisne, where the terrible lovers were tried: during the night of February 15 to 16, 2021, in their house in Longpont, located next door From the ruins of a Cistercian abbey, Eva Ionesco had assaulted her husband, Simon Liberati, with a bread knife, before hitting him with the fork of the log stove. She then called the police, who placed her the next day under judicial supervision. Had followed breakup, trial, divorce… First scoop revealed by The ring on the finger : Ionesco recounts there that, on the evening of the tragedy, Liberati had Connemara Lakes, which had the gift of exasperating him. If we recently learned that Juliette Armanet finds this song “filthy”, we did not know that Michel Sardou’s music could lead to the most extreme domestic violence. But it is true that between Liberati and Ionesco there were antecedents…
They both believe that they have finally met a soul mate
Flashback to a few years earlier: a thunderbolt strikes two loners who are a bit misanthropic. On the one hand, a woman who has not known a man for ages, forever hurt by a toxic mother, Irina Ionesco, who photographed her in erotic poses when she was a child. On the other, an aging, drug-addicted grump, who is on his third reading of the literary diary of Leautaud. Very quickly, in an atmosphere of mad Breton love, Eva Ionesco and Simon Liberati get married. They both believe that they have finally met a soul mate. It is the time of eternal promises. With the cunning that characterizes him, Liberati remembers that his friend Jean-Jacques Schuhl had made a critical hit with Ingrid Caven, a biographical and poetic portrait of his wife (Goncourt Prize 2000). Aware of the commercial potential of his companion, and dreaming in turn of Goncourt, Liberati negotiates with Stock editions a staggering advance (120,000 euros) to do the same with Ionesco, who is reluctant at first. Although in love with this bad boy, she is not fooled by the self-interested, manipulative and vampiric underside of the company. Never mind: Liberati offers her a facelift with part of her advance, and she entrusts her life to him.
Eva, the book, is one of the events of the 2015 literary season. Liberati is enjoying his greatest success, the couple he forms with Ionesco is media-friendly, they make the headlines Unbreakable, inseparable and haloed with a glamorous image fueled by their social circles, all very chic (Schuhl, therefore, but also Christian Louboutin, Vincent Darré, Pierre Le-Tan or Arielle Dombasle). Between Tout-Paris and the dismal house of Longpont, the duo writes, loves and argues. From page 104 of The ring on the finger (with the air of a rope around his neck), Ionesco compares himself to Natascha Kampusch, the little Austrian girl who was sequestered for eight years in a cache – Eva’s suffering will last a little shorter.
The descent into Hell
What follows is a descent into hell. In public, they give the image of a rock’n’roll but close-knit couple; in private, it turns to sausage juice. Liberati co-signs the screenplayA golden youth, film directed by Ionesco, but suspects her of cheating on him with the lead actor, Melvil Poupaud. Between two scenes of jealousy, they reconcile, bicker, travel – to Japan, Spain or Los Angeles, often to dreamy places –, continue to tear each other apart and patch things up non-stop. Seeing himself as a “muse of the stove”, Ionesco likes to simmer good meals for her husband. Liberati pays him back by removing his dentures, comparing himself to Satan, threatening his wife with a Jack Nicholson-style ax in Shining, or by praising him, again according to Eva Ionesco, the merits of Hitler (in whom he sees “a delicious man at heart”). This passionate love reached its peak during the first confinement, in the spring of 2020.
Liberati then invites to his home, in Longpont, the son of Eva (the musician Lukas Ionesco, a sort of neo-Syd Barrett) and his girlfriend (Clara Benador, model turned novelist at Gallimard). Liberati and Benador start flirting, without Eva Ionesco knowing how far the transgression goes. She has other worries: untenable, this “gothic gargoyle” of Liberati has moments of fury. Also described as “Simon the pig” in “auntie’s strident voice” or more simply as a “crazy tramp”, he starts drinking and getting high again. The moments of calm are rare, and relative: Liberati drags her spleen in black velvet slippers with skulls and in an old rotten tartan dressing gown, eaten by fungi. When he goes to bed, it’s with his German boots and a bottle of red wine, and to watch Carrie at the Devil’s Ball at full volume. How could such a household end well?
Adultery is consummated
After months of insults and divorce blackmail, Ionesco understands that the adultery is consummated, and that Liberati is now with Benador. While she is in despair, he explains to her that he wants to “have fun”. After a stay in Marrakech with Bernard-Henri Lévy, the Mephistophelian writer received Arielle Dombasle and Nicolas Ker at Longpont, who came to shoot a clip for their song in the remains of the abbey. Deconstruction of the Bride – clip in which Liberati plays a priest! The bride is indeed well deconstructed. Between Liberati and Ionesco, the violence goes up a notch. Liberati’s Nazi salutes, writes Eva Ionesco, don’t help matters. And this famous evening of February 15, 2021, Sardou’s music is the last straw.
This “dirty story” (as Ionesco defines it in a nod to Jean Eustache) being behind us, what should we remember? On the form, let’s salute the unique style of Eva Ionesco, lively and touching, with a titi verve rich in literary finds – we follow the adventures of this azimuth couple with a strange mixture of voyeurism and empathy, as if we had been their witness. On the merits, it should be noted that a certain left, which has always carried Liberati to the pinnacle, would now like to pillory him. Let’s keep a cool head: his escapades and his excesses take nothing away from his great talent and, if we were to condemn this demonic dandy, we would have to strike out of the history of art a good number of infrequents, in the forefront of which Gainsbourg Gainsbarre era, of which Liberati often makes think.
A Faustian Pact
Ionesco herself is ambiguous. If she describes a form of influence, she does not deny having consented to this chaotic adventure, and she nevertheless contributes to the legend of Liberati, which remains earthy and picturesque even in its worst excesses. He’s not an altar boy (although he was once at Saint-Sulpice!), he’s a decadent and extraordinary ogre, but Ionesco knew it. She looked to him for a fusion bond, she knew his appalling reputation and knew that she was signing, at the same time as her marriage contract, a Faustian pact. Liberati belittled her and ridiculed her regularly, but he introduced her to his editor at Grasset (Juliette Joste), and it was with him, and at his house, in their rare moments of tranquility in Longpont, that she dared to become a novelist. . He took a lot from her, while giving her in return. In 2017, Eva Ionesco’s first book was titled: Innocence. Neither of them entered this devastating love affair innocently, but neither of them has to come out guilty.
The ring on the finger, by Eva Ionesco. Robert Laffont, 490 pages, €22.