The critical and commercial buzz around Rituparno Ghosh's first Hindi film Raincoat is strong enough to prompt its director and leading lady to work together again.

Rituparno Ghosh and Aishwarya Rai are all set to team up for the third time after the Bengali Chokher Bali and the Hindi Raincoat. The film in Hindi is expected to cast Aishwarya Rai as Shabana Azmi's daughter.

"It's my third film in the mother-daughter trilogy after Unnishe April and Titli," says Ghosh.

While Aparna Sen and Debashree Roy had played mother and daughter in the first, real-life mother-daughter Aparna and Konkona Sensharma starred in the latter.

This project would precede Ghosh's other plan to make a Hindi film with Amitabh Bachchan in the lead. "Since that requires to be shot in winter I'll go ahead with my other film instead," says Ghosh.

The decision to make another mother-daughter film with the fascinating Rai-Azmi combo is prompted by the positive reactions to Raincoat, which was budgeted at Rs 2.5 crore.

"I'm quite pleasantly surprised by the response," confesses Ghosh. "This was my first film in Hindi, a language I'm not completely familiar or comfortable with. But it's been smooth sailing all the way."

For Aishwarya Rai, Raincoat is a special year-end triumph. "It's like a Christmas gift," she laughs.

"The messages and calls haven't stopped. Very frankly I was quite apprehensive about how my performance would be received. Niroo my character in Raincoat is someone I knew nothing about.

She's a woman from Bihar settled in Kolkata. Her thought processes, body language, clothes and attitude... all required a helluva lot of re-orientation on my part. I guess I managed to pull it off."

The favourable response to Aishwarya's performance comes as a year-end assurance after a fleet of flak-filled performances in Khakee, Kyun...Ho Gaya Na and Bride & Prejudice.

For Ghosh too the going has been tough, with the Bollywood bigwigs adamant on slotting him as a regional art house filmmaker.

"Raincoat has been able to live down both the ‘regional' and ‘art house' labels," he beams in relief.