The journey isn’t epic, and it doesn’t cover a great distance — emotionally or geographically.

But Mikhaël Hers’ latest film, set entirely in the XVth arrondisement of Paris and taking place over just under ten years, shows us the little details, small-scale tragedies and minor triumphs of a woman, her children and a homeless girl they take in, all of them thrown together as “The Passengers of the Night.”

Charlotte Gainsbourg is Elisabeth, 40something and her kids in the car with her, giddy at the sight of the street celebrations that accompanied the election of a Socialist president in 1981. It is a high moment and but the prologue of a story with a lot of ups and downs to it as she and her family pass through the decade.

By 1984, she is weeping at the news that her husband has moved in with his girlfriend, leaving her with teenager Matthias (Quito Rayon Richter) and college-age Judith (Megan Northam) and a high rise Beaugrenelle apartment that she can’t afford without going to work. Her ex won’t even support his kids.

The fact that “you’ve never worked” shouldn’t hold her back, her father (Didier Sandre) insists. Any job that “requires common sense and sensitivity” (in French with English subtitles) would be lucky to have her.

Elisabeth despairs of finding anything until her desperate letter to the hostess of her favorite late-night radio show, Vanda (Emmanuelle Béart) gets her an interview and a job as a call screener.

In the world of night owls, confessional callers and empty streets, the insomniac Elisabeth finds a home.

Meanwhile, the witty, writerly Matthias is failing at school, more interested in girl-watching than buckling down. Judith is making protesting a full-time job. And a drug-abusing street urchin (Noée Abita) brought in as an anonymous, “tell me nothing but truths” interview subject on the radio show taps into Elisabeth’s empathy and she takes her in.

Talulah, as she calls herself, will change lives and have her own changed, but mostly in tiny, incremental ways as she drifts in and out of lives and Elisabeth struggles to get out of the funk a divorce and the rejection that comes with it entails.

The dramatic touches here are simple and real-world relatable. We see — early on — that Elisabeth is a breast cancer survivor. Gainsbourg, a French actress with a resting depressed face, wholly inhabits Elisabeth’s self-loathing plight, her journey and the impulses — good and bad — that guide her out of it.

Matthias begins the tale as a 16 year-old almost too shy to flirt. But he throws over anything that might develop with a cute classmate to fall deep into a crush on Talulah, who shows the siblings “the streets” and the easiest way to sneak into a cinema.

Sure, you may want to see Matthew Modine and Nicolas Cage in “Birdy.” But “Full Moon in Paris” will have to do. Street urchins can’t be choosie.

Talulah is troubled, and her connection to Matthias has its dangers. They end up in the River Seine at one point. But even this melodramatic moment plays as a slice of the life-that-happens-to-you while you’re wondering what to do about your addictions or how to express yourself to your first love or trying to figure out how one becomes a writer in Paris.

The story isn’t the most arresting, with Elisabeth’s journey from call-screener to part-time librarian and fill-in on-air hostess mere background to the family life/love life/”real” life outside of work that Hers (“Amanda” and “This Summer Feeling” were his) is capturing here.

The late night radio milieu is arresting, but barely in the film. Judith, the ever-protesting “leftist” daughter, is one character whose story is given short shrift. I generally like movies that give us more to grab hold of than intimate, myopic melodramas like this offer.

But Hers and his leading lady highight the minor miracles, little kindnesses and “we’re all in this together” idealism of the film’s socialist era and make the idea of traveling as “The Passengers of the Night” inviting, if never quite exciting or intoxicating.

Rating: unrated, sex, nudity, alcohol abuse, smoking

Cast: Charlotte Gainsbourg, Quito Rayon Richter, Noée Abita, Megan Northam and Emmanuelle Béart.

Credits: Directed by Mikhael Hers, scripted by Maud Ameline, Mariette Désert and Mikhael Hers. A KimStim release.

Running time: 1:52