KEY POINTS:
A snaking queue forms before sunset in front of the drab brick exhibition hall in the farming town of Evreux in Normandy.
It is at least an hour before Francois Bayrou, the centrist who some believe will stage a spectacular upset in France's presidential elections next month, is scheduled to take the stage.
Then, dressed in Sunday best on a Monday night, the packed audience listen respectfully while Bayrou, gentleman farmer and champion of the Union for French Democracy Party, reels off his manifesto and pulls on the emotional levers.
For an hour and a half, Bayrou gently rubbishes his opponents, promises to revive respect for "republican values" and pledges to restore France's glory. The rhetoric is windy, but there is no heckling, just warm, sometimes adoring applause.
A local lad leads a rendition of the Marseillaise and the well-heeled farmers and their wives troop home, seemingly satisfied.
A visiting New Zealander could well be stunned by all this. Back home, the electoral meeting is a time-honoured tradition of rugged, sometimes raucous, contact. Sleeves rolled up, a candidate faces a citizens' grilling on almost any issue, from local planning laws and Good Friday shopping to the national flag. No one would shy away from having a go at a politician, no matter how big.
In France, the idea that any of the mainstream candidates would get down and dirty like that is almost laughable, especially at such a late stage.
If anything, Bayrou, the conservative Nicolas Sarkozy and the Socialist Segolene Royal appear to have taken their cue from the gods who descended from Olympus to indulge in a spot of adoration from the mortals.
From local meetings to TV shows, their every appearance is big on feel-good and fuzziness, rarely challenged by the public or the media, and stamped by remoteness that borders on aloofness. Big promises on welfare, education and spending are greeted with cheers or respectful silence; no rough voice can be heard demanding to know how these will be financed.
"It's a show of demagoguery and populism," says political satirist Guy Carlier. In his view, the election campaign is so divorced from reality that it should be likened to the absurdity of Monty Python.
Many sceptics in France would agree with him. There has been much hand-wringing here about the "American-style campaign", with its spin-doctoring and focus groups, its emphasis on style rather than substance.
But the telling argument is that the candidates' Olympian approach would only work if it met a need.
For all its image as a revolutionary, self-confident country, France is in many respects a conservative, unconfident nation scarred by the divisions of World War II, political instability in the 1950s and the student protests of 1968.
The President has extraordinary powers, far more than in any other mature democracy; he and the elite-school graduates that comprise the senior corps of the civil service are the guardians of the state.
They have an unwritten pact with the electorate to govern fairly and efficiently, or else face the people's wrath. To gain this trust, candidates must place themselves above the political fray and show they have the right presidential style, which is a mixture of stern and caring, of protecting and encouraging.
In other words, they act as Sir Lancelot - or, as Freudians might point out more disturbingly, as mummy or daddy.
This role play may seem infantile for a mature democracy, and some would call it sad. Yet, as France's new political generation gears for power, it certainly seems destined to endure.
