‘COTTON Mary” is an infrequent directorial outing by Ismail Merchant, who usually produces movies directed by his longtime partner, James Ivory.

Part travelogue and part vehicle for the great Indian actress and Merchant-Ivory regular Madhur Jaffrey (“Shakespeare Wallah”) it’s very much in line with Ivory’s movies, particularly “Heat and Dust.”

The Australian actress Greta Scacchi, who starred in that arid 1982 drama, returns to post-colonial India for the seriocomic “Cotton Mary,” though her role, as a wealthy Briton named Lily, is very much subsidiary to that of Jaffrey, who receives an unusual credit as co-director.

Jaffrey has a field day in the title role, an Anglo-Indian nurse who moves in with Lily after the birth of Lily’s second daughter.

Lily is unable to nurse, so Mary enlists her wheelchair-bound sister (Neena Gupta) as a wet nurse.

Mary quickly takes over the household, pushing aside the longtime family major-domo (Prayag Raaj) and unwittingly manipulating Lily’s distracted reporter husband (James Wilby) into a relationship with her beautiful niece (Sakina Jaffrey).

Jaffrey has several great scenes, notably a beauty-shop confrontation with Lily’s pals, who have become alarmed about Mary’s increasingly strident manner.

Working from an intelligent screenplay by Alexandra Viets, Merchant makes witty and subtle points about discrimination and class, albeit in the leisurely and somewhat bloodless style so typical of the Merchant-Ivory canon.

“Cotton Mary” is uncommonly well-acted and beautifully shot on location in southern India, but it’s not exactly riveting.

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COTTON MARY 1/2

Part travelogue and part vehicle for the great Indian actress Madhur Jaffrey. Ismail Merchant, usually the producing half of Merchant-Ivory, directs a leisurely comic drama about a half-caste nurse who commandeers a British household in southern India of 1954. Running time: 125 minutes. Rated R. At the Paris, 58th Street and Fifth Avenue.