Willard Carroll and (below) Salman Khan, Ali Larter

He loves mainstream Hindi cinema, and not just as an American tourist gazing down at exotica. Five years ago, Hollywood director Willard Carroll made that wonderful romantic comedy, Playing By Heart, featuring Sean Connery. Now Carroll is in Rajasthan doing what he loves best. A full-on Bollywood film with a huge number of dances (choreographed by Remo) and songs in both Hindi and English.

The film?s first schedule began on March 27, at Kimsar Fort which is two hours? drive from Jodhpur. The film?s appealing cast of Salman Khan, Ali Larter (who plays the title role of Marigold) and Nandana Dev Sen is currently having a ball on location. The traditional love triangle pays a homage to the Great Bollywood Dream particularly Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam and Sanjay Leela Bhansali ? the director?s favourite film and filmmaker from India. (Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam seems to be Salman?s current favourite, too ? some of the songs in his new release, Lucky, seem to be choreographed a la Hum?.)

The story about the relationship between an Indian choreographer Prem (Salman Khan, using his favourite name borrowed from Sooraj R. Barjatya?s cinema), an American actress Marigold (Ali Larter) and Prem?s Indian love-interest Jahnvi (Nandana Dev Sen) will finally be stretched into a quadrangle when Jahnvi walks into the sunset with an American.

The film, therefore, has two sets of cross-cultural relationships, intertwined into the Bollywood song-and-dance formula. Unlike Gurinder Chadha?s Bride & Prejudice which adapted a similar mood and format, though it kept itself ironically distanced from the notorious conventions and formulas of mainstream Hindi cinema, Marigold purports to go the whole hog. There?s no attempt by the American director to distance himself from the Bollywood Formula, by irony or any other device.

According to Nandana, ?Willard Carroll seems to have studied the Bollywood conventions more closely and intimately than most of our own directors. He seems to know our song-and-dance tradition better than us! I?m having a ball shooting with Salman and Ali. There?s no undercurrent of rivalry or anything. I guess that?s something that happens when two Indian actresses work together. I?ve worked with international crews earlier, and this one is as professional as it gets. They have got everything so much in place, so much so that I can?t dream of taking a day off to visit my ailing grandmother in Santiniketan. There?s just no room for even a small break.?

The current schedule in Rajasthan will be over on April 10. Then the Marigold unit moves to Mumbai on May 12. In mid-May, the shooting will be over after one song filmed on Salman and Ali.

So is Salman ready for an international career? Unlike Aamir Khan who had employed an agent in LA to get him work after Lagaan, Salman has no plans ? immediate or otherwise ? of using Marigold as a stepping stone to Hollywood.

It remains to be seen whether his pairing with his sexy American costar Ali Larter (she played the clairvoyant teenager in the plane crash horror flick, Final Destination, and its sequel) turns out to be more successful than Aishwarya Rai?s costar crossover with Martin Henderson in Bride & Prejudice.