[3] The cast also includes Monique Lepage, Béatrice Picard, Marcel Sabourin, Yvon Thiboutot, Amulette Garneau, Louise Portal, André Cartier, Yvan Canuel, Jacques Bilodeau, Marguerite Lemir, Denis Drouin, Anne Létourneau, Marthe Mercure, Edgar Fruitier, Bonfield Marcoux and Pat Gagnon.
Martin Knelman of The Globe and Mail wrote that "The film has intimations of a western morality play and a Deep South melodrama, but it's unmistakably Quebecois in style.
You don't doubt the accuracy of what Perron is showing, and this is a film with many things going for it—intelligence, feeling, and lively performances, especially by Monique Lepage as Taureau's gypsy-like mother.
"[4] For Cinema Canada, Natalie Edwards wrote that the film was let down somewhat by Mélançon portraying Taureau as essentially a "castrated St. Bernard" rather than the avatar of raw, magnetic and dangerous sexuality that the villagers saw him as, but concluded that "Taureau is a good film, despite some awkward intercutting, protracted tensions that start to slip, and unnecessary or underdeveloped characters.
And above all it is beautifully sensual in a pleasantly adolescent sense: lots of soft flesh, feathers, hair, breasts, taut nipples.