One of the most interesting things about Christian Petzold's Yella is the way it reconfigures the car not as a living space or as a space of self-realization, but as a working place. In the US, the car is freedom and social status, or somehow dialectically linked to these ideas. No such approach here: the car is not limited to its social function of wealth indicator (though it is also that), it is mainly a place where economic relations (therefore power relations, since power is with he who wields balance sheets best) are determined, through deceit or its acknowledgement.What makes the film intelligent is that it does all of this after having set up the car as an instrument of persecution (in the shot of Yella being followed from inside the car), and then violence (in the car crash). No wonder then that the only moment when the car is used for a journey (of sorts), and then driven off course (to Yella's home town), as opposed to the commuting seen until then, should lead to conflict: relationships are not defined anymore if the car is taken off its predetermined course...
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