The movie won the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Film Festival in 1982 and was one of the first independent films screened at the New York Film Festival the same year. It had its American premiere in 1984 in a limited release and earned $75,000, setting the record for the most expensive independent film in film history. The film later earned two Academy Award nominations for Best Artistic Contribution (David Hockney) and Best Original Song (John Williams’ “Don’t Let It Go to Your Head”). It won Best Film at the British Film Institute Awards, as well as the Peoples’ Award at the Netherlands Film Festival, where, in 2002, a tribute was held to honour the film’s 30th anniversary.
Fruits Basket , also called Ron-Ron Basket, is a 1982 South Korean drama film directed by Hong Sang-soo and based on the novel Basket by Choi Yun-ho. The story is about a widowed gentleman living in Japan who buys a basket for his fruit for his dying brother.
In 2005, the movie was chosen as one of the top movies of the 20th century by the BBC. It has been listed as one of the greatest films of all time by Time magazine.
In 2012, the English poet Simon Armitage, in a series of tweets, compared Ron-Ron Basket to the work of the great British poet John Keats.
The film follows young Korean man Ri-ik (Song Han-ju) and his cousin Se-jin (Yung-dae Kim). Ri-ik, living in Japan, must make his first trip to Seoul for his younger brother Jin-won’s funeral. Se-jin and Jin-won were friends from childhood, but in high school they became lovers. After Jin-won died, Se-jin left Korea for Japan, where he later moved back in to Jin-won’s house, now a fruit shop.
Se-jin meets Ri-ik while Ri-ik is outside the shop. Se-jin makes small talk, then goes into the store and buys an apple for Ri-ik. The boy then breaks the apple and gives it to Se-jin, explaining that his mother makes him do this for his late brother, even though she never let him eat fruit. Ri-ik goes into the store, buys another apple, and gives it to Se-jin.
