Pol López: "Being an adult isn't about paying bills and having status. Living like this casts a shadow of sadness over you."

He has just stepped into the shoes of a man forced to grow up in a world where he can't grow. Homeless and jobless, Pol López (Barcelona, 1984) embodies in Os, the protagonist of La Furgo , the precariousness of a system that expelled him before he could fully fit in. "We live in a hyper-fragile way," he says.

Is being an adult about paying bills?

If there's anything interesting about this character, it's that, without having any grand philosophical or political ideas, he tries to find another way of living beyond just those things, things like paying the bills and rent. He's barely surviving, but at the same time he's trying to do it differently.

When did you realize you'd reached that stage of maturity? When you said, 'Looks like this is serious now'?

What I'm constantly trying to do is avoid the pall of sadness, the kind that requires you to talk very seriously all the time about your tax return, the Euribor, inflation...

You founded your own theater company and have said that you performed on terraces without pay. Have you experienced the precariousness you portray on screen?

And yes, indeed. I experienced it when I was starting out: I know what it's like to have to move back home with your parents for a year, or to do jobs you don't want to because you have no other choice. I was lucky because I started working in my field very early on. But the theater world is also a super vulnerable and precarious one.

Os is a romantic type. A problem in a society that so closely links identity to material achievement.

That's the charm of it, which isn't governed by those patterns, but by more selfless and seemingly naive ones that don't consist of limiting your life to boasting about status and personal success. The bond with his daughter is very beautiful, and he experiences it through play. We must try to ensure that play doesn't die just because we're adults. Besides, what does that word mean?

That we must die of seriousness.

I'm not attracted to that idea.

When your character tries to escape, he draws. How do you escape the overdose of reality?

I'm lucky to work on something I love, which allows me to create synergies and also to fantasize.

There's another form of escapism in the film. That of a neighbor who escapes her frustration by messing things up for others...

It's another way of evacuating sadness. But we all do this looking at others. The question is to what extent. We're all voyeurs , but you have to know when you've crossed the line and are judging too much. In that case, you have to focus on your own things again, and above all, don't blame others for your frustrations or project your desires onto them. Maybe the point is not to desire so much.

Is there an excess of expectations?

I think so. And there's no need to have so many.

Os also struggles with getting into the system, and not just for purely material reasons. There's a certain strangeness about everything you have to do when you're older. Have you ever felt that way?

Yes, and it's a real pain. All this bureaucracy, so many obligations... That's why one of the things that interested me about the film is the possibility of trying to be free despite everything. To a certain extent, of course, because you also have to take control of your life. But the beautiful thing is that the film tries to find a way to remain honest.

The Van is tragic and comical. So is life.

Many people have told me they've watched it with a heavy heart, because there are hard things, but there is also hope in the ability to reinvent oneself, to find one's own path.

It seems like salvation comes when one acknowledges vulnerability. Why is that so difficult?

For a few years now, things have been different than they used to be, especially for men. This one, for example, is struggling with his own pride. In this sense, it's good that we're starting to tell stories about men from a perspective that doesn't focus on strength, but rather speaks to their vulnerability, how they can break down emotionally, and how things affect them.

The film also speaks of loneliness and civilization, hence the metaphor of the bear.

Civilization consists of controlling the impulses of rage or animality. The film tells of people trying to be civilized when in reality neither nature nor the city is civilized. And yes, loneliness is on the rise.

Fixing it isn't easy either. The couple gets complicated in La Furgo , and it also became more complicated for his character, Suro, after discovering that the countryside is much less idyllic than it seems. Does love depend on the context?

You may have a good opportunity with someone, and suddenly, for financial reasons, or a move... you realize it's not what you thought it would be. It also depends on timing. And maybe at a given moment in your life, you shouldn't put that love, that desire to care for another, into a partner, but rather, for example, into a child, on whom you should focus.

You've just performed Molière's The Misanthrope in theater. A character who's so wrong for being so right.

Unlike him, I really like humanity. The problem is being too closed-minded. Having brilliant ideas doesn't mean you have to stop listening to others. You have to make room for them, let them transform you.