(More than a) Quick Look: The Vanishing (1988)

This is an extremely good foreign mystery/drama, that I would defiantly put in the category of "must see".  (French is primary language track.)  The premise and the film are so beautifully simple, and it engages the audience to such a point - that in the second half of the film you can feel your skin crawl and the desire to want to pull your hair out at the same time.  This movie does not have any gore or outward violence, and the pace is somewhat slow moving, but deliberate- tense.  The ending you will definitely not forget.
The story starts with a Dutch couple, Rex and Saskia, on vacation in France.  They stop at a busy rest area for gas, and Saskia goes into the shop for drinks.  She is not seen again.  The tension crescendos very well as Rex, at first, is "just looking for her" at the rest stop, then slips down to that gut wrenching-ill feeling as it seems Saskia is just gone, and that something bad has likely happened.  Rex, as you might imagine, becomes obsessed with what happened to Saskia, and spends the next 3 years trying to live a normal life, even getting a new girlfriend, but still unable to to "move on". 
So now we are introduced to Raymond, the abductor.  He is not the "quiet loner" wearing all black we might expect in your typical Hollywood mystery.  He is a committed family man, with a wife and kids, but we learn as the film unfolds he is a cold, calculating sociopath.  Raymond is planning his next crime, but now becomes intrigued by Rex's obsession about Saskia.
Raymond contacts Rex indicating he knows what happened to Saskia and he will tell him, but...
The tension hits unimaginable heights here - when Rex knows Raymond kidnapped Saskia, yet face-to-face still submits to him because of his obsession to know (again) "what really happened".  The director did such an outstanding job - because, as the audience, you want to know what happened too, yet, you do not want anything bad to happen, even though you know it did.  What irony.

**Warning** I do not recommend the 1993 redo/remake of The Vanishing starring Jeff Bridges and Kiefer Sutherland.  I like both of these actors, and it was the same director who did the 1988 version, yet the on-screen product was awful.  Arguably one of the worst remakes of a movie, ever.