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To an outsider, the picturesque French countryside with its rolling hills and swathes of green fields is a seemingly idyllic place to live — that is, until you speak with the locals.
In Denain, an industrial town that was once a capital of coal and steel, people feel mainstream politicians have failed them.
"Here misery prevails," local cafe owner, Joseph Sauvage, said.
"We had money, economically speaking the town was significant. Everyone had an easy life.
"Now, it is all about poverty — there are no jobs anymore."
His story resonates across a large portion of the north-east, an area that was traditionally a Socialist stronghold.
As factories have shut up shop and blue-collar jobs have disappeared, the region has become a far-right heartland.
Locals desperate for radical change
This weekend, many people will vote for anti-immigration presidential candidate Marine Le Pen for the first time.
"I would like France to leave the European Union and for us to leave the Euro [currency] zone," factory worker Herve Danneau said.
"If we leave the EU there will be jobs for everybody but for now Europe is killing us."
We chatted on a picket line outside the Whirlpool whitegoods factory in the city of Amiens.
The factory is closing and 280 positions are moving to Poland.
Most don't particularly like the far-right but believe populist Marine Le Pen is the only candidate who can deliver radical change.
"We have a Europe for the financiers. If we were in a true meaningful Europe it wouldn't be ok to relocate a plant from here in France to Poland because of lower wages," union official Joel Peuvot said.
National Front organisers claim the despondent mood in the north-east shows they still have a chance of pulling off a Donald Trump-style election shock.
"We have an excellent chance of winning [the presidential election]," Marine Le Pen's campaign manager, David Rachline, said.
"There are many men and women just as in love with France as us who want economic patriotism, who want the end of immigration, who want a thorough review of the European Union and I believe this is why we will attract the people."
'We were kings'
When you drive from the regional areas into Paris, it feels as though you are heading into a different country.
Map: Road map through North East France
In relative terms, the capital is thriving and most are very much in favour of staying in the European Union.
But here too there is anger about France's place in the world.
"There is an economic and social crisis and also a feeling of decline, an identity crisis," said Yves Bertoncini from the pro-EU organisation, European Movement France.
"We were kings, we are not any longer we cannot shape the world.
"In addition, we've had a political crisis. The President was very weak, the mainstream Government was weakened … and two political outsiders have benefited. This has never happened before."
The young and the restless
While Ms Le Pen is surfing a wave of working class outrage, her opponent Emmanuel Macron is similarly benefiting from widespread voter discontent.
The free market liberal was laughed at last year when he founded En Marche! — a party with mostly popular policies cherry-picked from the centre-left and centre-right.
But corruption scandals in The Republicans Party and the failings of the deeply unpopular Socialist Government have seen him do the French equivalent of a Stephen Bradbury.
The former investment banker skated from the back of the field to the front in just a few months, propelled by an enormous surge of suburban and inner-city discontent with the two major parties.
"He's a real breath of fresh air," says En Marche! member Sibylle Mansouri de Bourran, when we meet at a small campaign event in the suburb of Les Mureaux, about 40 kilometres north-west of Paris.
"He's going to do something for businesses, I think he can make our economic [situation] stronger and the major parties have really just forgotten about the suburbs, like here."
"He's young, he's positive … and also the National Front would be very bad for France."
The National Front's extreme, anti-Semitic roots are now Emmanuel Macron's biggest electoral asset.
Polls suggest he's on track to win by a margin of 60 to 40 per cent.
Uniting against the National Front
Ms Le Pen has tried repeatedly to distance herself from her party's past, expelling her father, who founded the National Front, and recently standing down as its leader to concentrate on her campaign.
But angry protesters from across the political spectrum are demanding all other parties unite to prevent her becoming president.
"There's always a danger with these people [the far-right]," Etan Werb told me at a large protest in Place de la Republique in central Paris.
"We got vaccinated in 1945 but we have to get a booster every five years to remember what those people did".
With victory in sight, Mr Macron and his close confidants are spruiking the benefits of globalisation at last-minute campaign events.
They are promising to use the European Union as a tool to leverage France's influence on the world stage, overhaul the country's languid economy and dramatically improve the education system.
But at a political debate in an upmarket district of Paris, it's obvious healing the nation's huge divisions and winning over Marine Le Pen's base is also a major goal of En Marche!
"It's very difficult for one reason, what she's promising seems to be common sense," Sylvie Goulard, a French member of the European Parliament, said.
She is currently serving as Mr Macron's European Affairs adviser and is tipped to soon be tapped for a high-profile role in the country's Foreign Ministry.
"[Ms Le Pen] says if you want to protect yourself then you close the door. If you don't like your political situation you give up your currency. But we know that it is not true," Ms Goulard said.
"It's clear that if she was elected it would be a disaster for the most deprived people."
As polling day approaches both candidates can reasonably claim to have dramatically changed French politics.
If he wins, which seems likely, Mr Macron will become the country's youngest and first independent modern president.
If she loses, Ms Le Pen is likely to keep trying to move the country to the right, acting as a vocal, anti-establishment opposition for the next five years.
If Mr Macron can't deliver on his ambitious promises to fix France, the far-right will be in a prime position to surge further at the next presidential election in 2022.
Topics: elections, world-politics, france, european-union
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